The Amazing Wooden Mirror [pics]
Thu, Aug 7, 2008
Mirror, mirror, on the wall… what if you were made of wood? Interactive artist, Danny Rozen, has done just this, creating a mirror out of 830 wood blocks - but would you put one on your wall?
The concept is simple but formidably clever: a tiny camera gathers light and shape data, before sending it to a computer that processes it and uses hundreds of tiny electric motors to shift the wood blocks into the image in front of the device. Subtle gradations of shade are achieved by both the natural grain of the wood and the angle at which they are displayed, casting shadow if necessary.
The result is a sort of ghostly image, imprinted upon the wooden pixels like a haunted trace and just like a real mirror the image moves in real time - although the effect is more like some kind of spirit mimicking its subject than your average mirror. Rozen, who has created a wide variety of interactive art pieces, has experimented with other materials, although there is no news as to what surface he might attempt to use next.
Lying at the heart of this project is again a simple but deeply moving concept: the idea of everything around us acting as a mirror, or perhaps more precisely - making everything around us into a mirror onto the world. By using a naturally unreflective surface to create reflections, Rozen highlights not only the human beings incredible capacity for technical accomplishment, but the fact that every object in the world might reflect, in some sense, the image of those who have crafted, used and sold it.
The nature of reflective surfaces and reflections is what is at stake here - but what’s more, it’s a stunningly impressive piece of craftsmanship in its own right and if anything can be said to reflect the image of those that created it, then this surely reflects well on Rozen.
3 Trackbacks For This Post
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Wooden Mirror. « Says:
August 12th, 2008 at 12:04 am[...] http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com Tags: meta-identity, [...]
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Infovore » links for August 18th Says:
August 19th, 2008 at 1:01 am[...] The Amazing Wooden Mirror [pics] | Environmental Graffiti "a tiny camera gathers light and shape data, before sending it to a computer that processes it and uses hundreds of tiny electric motors to shift the wood blocks into the image in front of the device. Subtle gradations of shade are achieved by both the natural grain of the wood and the angle at which they are displayed, casting shadow if necessary." Beautiful. (tags: wood mirror technology art visualisation design interaction craft ) [...]
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Interesting Wooden Mirror | Mennoboy.com Says:
August 22nd, 2008 at 7:03 pm[...] Picture from Environmental Graffiti [...]
August 8th, 2008 at 8:41 pm
Hey — just so the search results work better, I think his name is Danny Rozin and not Rozen!
August 9th, 2008 at 4:02 am
I don’t know looks really grainy to me.
August 10th, 2008 at 1:12 am
Amazing idea.
I think the mirrored image would be even more precise, if the wooden pixels where smaller.
August 15th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
T think if you tried to shrink the squares it would loose some of it’s charm. The large block size gives the image it’s character. I want to know how much it would be to buy this type of mirror!!
August 15th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
Kiril. Go ahead and build it if you think you could improve on it. How can you be anything but impressed by this piece.
I get so sick of armchair critics thinking they can do better.
August 15th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
A fascinating idea and very well made, I’d love to see this first-hand.
What would happen if a ‘conventional’ mirror were placed to face the wooden mirror? Would it go into continuous movement or reach a stable point?
August 16th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
To be fair, I don’t think Kiril was criticizing, just stating the fact that the image would be clearer with more, smaller blocks, increasing the ‘resolution’.
However I’m with Michael that the look is just right at the moment.
August 18th, 2008 at 5:16 am
What is ironic is how society wants us to be so “Green” and worry about the environment, but then some goober allows a bunch of trees to die to make wooden blocks to attract the same people who say they are so “Green” and conscious of environmental issues. How many trees died for in name of art??