Schlieren Photography / Currents

This schlieren video was created in collaboration with Rudi Strickler at his laboratory, using a large volume of water rather than compressed microscope slides in order to preserve the natural fluid environment surrounding the organisms. The work focuses primarily on phantom midge larvae (Chaoborus), alongside copepods and water fleas moving through the background, visualizing the otherwise invisible currents and density gradients produced as they swim, feed, and interact.

Schlieren imaging works by revealing tiny changes in the refractive index of water caused by differences in density, temperature, and fluid movement. As organisms move through the highly viscous microscopic environment, they generate complex wakes and currents that bend light and become visible as shifting patterns of shadow and distortion. Many planktonic organisms rely on hydrodynamic sensing, using these fluid disturbances for mating, feeding, escape behaviors, and communication, making the surrounding water itself an active and constantly changing part of their ecology.

This work is part of an ongoing interest in the environments and umwelten of microscopic organisms, and in imagining what it might feel like to move, sense, and exist within the fluid world of a plankter.