Psychoactive plants and fungi have long been tools to explore the mysteries of human consciousness. Now the visionary artists behind the Microcosms project have turned the tables on the plant kingdom, using high-tech tools to reveal the stunning beauty hidden deep inside sacred plant medicines. No hallucinogens required for this trip.
Don Lattin, author of The Harvard Psychedelic Club and Changing Our Minds
Jorge Marcone The collection of microscopic images, or, more precisely, digital visualizations, shared by Steven F. White and Jill Pflugheber in Microcosms is an initiation into the opportunities offered by the confocal microscope for the conservation of biocultural heritage. My students celebrate that these visualizations give us another way for the sacred plants to engrave…
Stephen J. Haggarty Commentary on Microcosms: A Homage to Sacred Plants of the Americas Toward a Digital Ethnobotany & Advancing the ‘Archaic Revival’ One rarely comes across a project of great merit, both scientifically and artistically, that makes original and significant contributions to both domains of creative pursuits. Yet this is the case with the…
Rina C. Faletti The website Microcosms, opened in 2022, presents the inaugural results of a plant-art project that exhibits a visually striking and intellectually stimulating image collection of living plants taken under a microscope. Electric colors and bold patterns captured through the method the authors call microcosmic phytoformalism, a specialized confocal laser scanning microscopy, reveal intricate structures…
Carlos Castaño-Uribe Science and art are not only more united today in their methodology, they also reinforce each other through the patterns of human perception that push us to the exploration of the environment around us. Whether it is digital art or scientific microscopy, the approach of the microcosm is a gateway to the fascinating…
Constantino Manuel Torres Browsing Jill and Steven’s spectacular website Microcosms: A Homage to Sacred Plants of the Americas, we are constantly reminded of two artists: the first is the Mazatec shaman-poet María Sabina (1894-1985), who chants: “I am the woman who looks into the insides of things.” Steven and Jill, through the resources provided by…
Roberto Forns-Broggi It’s not exactly easy to turn to the tendency to consider Nature as art because it’s still overwhelming to measure everything by the yardstick of human realities accustomed to norms and familiar meanings. But what can give us this thirst for life, for flowering, for the time of what’s distinctive that nourishes a…
