Friday, January 18, 2013
This Mind-Boggling Installation Breaks The Laws Of Physics--Or Does It?
Co.Design: business + innovation + design: Supermajor--the art piece, not the group of corporations--takes you by surprise. The installation is set up in a darkened room, with a single bulb casting a flickering light over six vintage oil cans. One of them has a rent in it, and a honey-colored oil pours out onto the white pedestal below. At least that’s what we expect it to do. But thanks to a complex optical illusion, the oil seems to be moving back into the can.
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9 comments:
I saw this illusion a little while ago on Gizmodo, its really an impressive illusion but the first one that i saw actually showed the liquid frozen in motion but that actually utilized the frame speed of the camera and a corresponding bass rhythm playing from a speaker tied to the water. this is very impressive for it being a live illusion that you can walk up and enjoy.
This is amazing. first of all having been hit pretty hard by the bp oil spill, I love the symbolism behind this project. & the illusion! I dont even know what to think. Im trying to figure out a way that that would be possible and am completely stumped. Besides the fact that it falls up instead of down Im also stumped by the way the as each drop goes up it connects to a string of drops all pointing outward & ive never seen anything like that, falling up or down. The artist seems like he would make quite a great addition to the theatre community with the different way his mind seems to work.
If you watch the youtube link that accompanies the article it poses an interesting theory on how this installation works. I've never really thought about how different tones, waves, frequencies, etc might influence the natural properties of something but it's clear that the implications are plenty.
It kind of reminds me of the episode of 'Big Bang Theory' when they place a mix of cornstarch and water that is normally liquid on a sub-woofer and the bass frequencies turn it to a solid and make it dance.
fascinating.
This allusion is absolutely beautiful. It shows just how amazing science is and how just a simple think like sound waves and frequency can change something so natural seeming into something seemingly impossible. it really makes me appreciate the simplicity of science and how enjoyable it can be.
As many have seen and been awed by, I was awwed. The installations is very fascianted and a little mind blowing, for obvious reasons: Main one being GRAVITY!!!! Nothing can just move UP gravity that is impossible!!!! Yet we tend to trust what we see and what we see is water moving up!! So I would love to learn more about it.
I also watched the youtube video addressing water and different sound Htz. Yet again, AMAZED!! So what is it and how does it look like it is moving up and still can hear the water hitting the bottom of the bucket. Still awesome.
This video reminds me of playing with a strobe light and a fan where if you set the flash to the right speeds it looks like the fan is spinning backwards. Its all about setting the speed of the flash so that you only see the "frames" you want to. What's really impressive is that the artist managed to get the liquid to fall at a consistent enough speed for this illusion to work.
A poignant usage of an old trick. I remember seeing this at the Science Museum when I was a kid, either Boston or COSI in Columbus, can't remember. The strobe in that case had a frequency modulator on it that allowed the viewer to adjust the frequency to make the droplets appear frozen in mid air or even flow upwards, like the oil in this piece. There must have been a way to adjust the flow rate of the water too, because I remember having the ability to achieve different sized and shaped water droplets. I can imagine a full stage version of this effect that could be quite striking, although these days of course I suppose we would just project it if we wanted the look. Blah. Here's hoping for the EMP that winks out all of our precious electroni-- bzzt... error: offline....
This was a real treat. I love how the artist was inspired by the BP oil spill. It makes me think of how sometimes we wish we could turn back time and undo all of our mistakes. I really like the idea that the artist used flashing lights to create the optical illusion of picture frames. It really looked like one of those old films. When watching the film, I noticed that I tried to connect the picture frames and fill the gaps of darkness with a memory of the image that appeared before. It's interesting to see how humans always try to fill in gaps because those gaps are filled differently depending on the person filling it.
For being a live installation, this is pretty cool. I've seen something similar on a smaller scale in one or two science museums, where they have a steady drops of water and a flickering strobe light, and the drop appears to stand still or fall back up depending upon the strobe speed. But those were always on a much smaller scale, and enclosed as well. So that the artist managed to recreate that in a less stable environment is pretty amazing
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