Supernovas from cotton candy and yoghurt

An artistic project by Sander van der Bij and David Marcel de Jong. 

What looks like a video is actually a slideshow. The supernovas are patches of cotton candy in yogurt. The planets are similar soups, but in a glass bowl. They were photographed with a macro lens with an intermediate ring, which allowed the camera lens to approach the soups to less than a centimeter. This results in ultra-high resolution photos, which in projection allows you to zoom out endlessly without the images losing their sharpness. Projecting them into negative transforms the white yogurt into the inky black expanse. A touch of orange paint in the cotton candy turns to blue-green, and vice versa. The stars are glitter, sprinkled over the soups. One last stroke of genius: right in the middle of each digital slide is a tiny circle that photographer Sander van der Bij has left completely translucent. Thanks to these circles, we can create the effect of objects gliding in and out of view, just like in a real spaceship.

With 2D photos, the duo created a world that viewers experience as 3D. Perhaps best of all are the three artistic-content dimensions of RUIM: with highly analog and everyday raw materials, Van der Bij built a digital universe, but in the retro style and atmosphere of the hopeful heyday of space travel almost half a century ago.