Watch the art of Roman Hill on film

Roman Hill’s canvas is eight square millimetres of glass and his media are commonly available: oil, water, ink, paint and alcohol.

Combined, they are aesthetically awesome examples of the principles of fluid dynamics – the field concerned with the movement of liquids and gases, and thus encompassing everything from the evolution of stars and plate tectonics to blood circulation and turbulence (when fluids behave as a chaotic mess).

Issue 87 of Cosmos magazine contains images from Hill’s movies explaining the fluid dynamics at work: principles that remain consistent regardless of scale, but still a common occurrence that’s complex and hard to predict.

“I was really playing around with textures,” he says. “I realised that people understood weird textures in an image really fast, that they could really capture its beauty.”

Hill has produced a number of short films, culminating in this, his latest: As Above.

It may look high-tech CGI, but in fact, all of Hill’s films are made in real-time using low-tech accessories. For the next one, he says: “I’m using hot water, some flowers I found in the garden. Filming them really close will make it look like it’s another world.”