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Posts Tagged ‘Marble’

This $95 lens attachment turns the world around you into a globe using a little glass marble

11 Nov

We’ve come across a number of weird lenses and lens accessories over the years, but the Soratama from Zenjix certainly stands out from the crowd, for better or worse.

The lens attachment features a 72mm filter thread and is designed to go in front of nearly any lens you can find step down/up rings for. It uses a single sheet of glass with what is effectively a clear marble to turn the world around you into a little globe of sorts.

These globe-style shots aren’t new, per se, but unlike photos that use larger glass orbs, this attachment is smaller and means your hand won’t be in the image. We can’t attest to image quality, but the above video shows what kind of shots are possible with the Soratama. There are multiple versions of the Soratama being sold on eBay, starting around $ 95 with shipping.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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A Mirage You Can Touch: Liquid Marble Installation Fools the Eye

12 May

[ By Steph in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]

liquid marble 1

Even crueler than a real mirage, this convincing illusion continues to look like a real body of water until you reach down to touch its surface, only to find that it’s as solid as anything you’ve ever touched. Thankfully, this faux aquatic feature isn’t sitting in a desert somewhere to fake out unsuspecting travelers, but rather placed in the courtyard of the magnificent Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire Centre D’Arts et de nature, a garden center in France. The piece will be on display through November 2nd.

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Designer Mathieu Lehanneur achieved the effect with a marriage of 3D computer software, hand-polished green marble and natural light, so it looks like wind is rippling on the surface of a river. What would have been a split second of scenic beauty, experienced and then forgotten by the naked eye or captured in a two-dimensional photograph, is now frozen in time, made into a durable object that could last thousands of years.

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“I wanted to address the garden with water as my muse,” says Lehanneur. “The water whose presence we sense even before we first catch sight of it below the chateau, flowing uninterrupted to the sea. Some say the Loire is France’s last wild river; it shapes and nourishes the landscapes, it passes through without ever pausing along the way.”

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“I hope that, when passing the Chateau gates, the visitor will experience something that comes close to a magic portal, to a forbidden place in so many fairytales. Everything is liquid in this space, evanescent, enlightened, and yet it is executed in a material that is one of the most solid imaginable.”

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[ By Steph in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]

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Marble Earth: 7-Mile Scale Model Timelapse of Our Solar System

20 Sep

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

orbital paths desert

Starting with a model planet Earth the size of a marble, a team of filmmakers set out to simulate our entire solar system in motion and capture the results in a compelling short movie.

timelapse earth

In normal images and models of the planets in our solar neighborhood, nothing is too scale – at scale on a piece of paper, planets becoming vanishingly small and effectively impossible to see on the page. Textbooks and other graphics misrepresent sizes almost by necessity simply because it would be impossible to depict things otherwise in a small visual field.

timelapse marbel planet

The resulting visuals distort our sense of the distance between celestial bodies. In the scale model featured above, set in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, Alex Gorosh and Wylie Overstreet give the viewer a much greater intuitive understanding of the separation and size of these spatial objects.

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“As we got farther and farther away it diminished in size. Finally it shrank to the size of a marble, the most beautiful marble you can imagine. That beautiful, warm, living object looked so fragile, so delicate, that if you touched it with a finger it would crumble and fall apart.” said James Irwin, Apollo 15 astronaut. He is one of only 24 people in human history have seen the full circle of the Earth with their own eyes.

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Using LED lights, GPS calculations, a dirt disrupter and ultimately cars driving in circles to simulate the orbits at night, the team created a 1:847,638,000 scale model in which blips of light represent the various bodies in space.

timelapse sun

One of the participants climbed a nearby mountain to film it all from above, while post-production overlays create a key for the video. Process documentation was made in part with a drone flying overhead. According to its creators, this is the first scale model of the solar system ever constructed.

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Pink Marble Public Pissoir: Open-Air Urinal in Urban Zurich

28 Aug

[ By Steph in Architecture & Public & Institutional. ]

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This giant hunk of pink marble in the middle of a Zurich car park isn’t a sculpture, exactly; it’s a place to relieve yourself in the open air so you don’t go stinking up the city. So-called ‘pissoirs’ can be found all over Europe, ranging from ornate Victorian designs resembling gazebos to portable plastic contraptions to cylindrical urinals that actually retract into the ground. Portuguese architecture firm Bureau A’s version, standing in the middle of a parking lot, looks like modern art.

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From the rose tint of the high-end marble imported from Lisbon to the LED light advertising its presence after dark, this thing doesn’t look anything like what most of us would identify as a urinal. “In the form of a noble fountain, a classical figure of occidental culture, Lisbon sends a solid salute to rich Zurich,” say the designers.

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Indeed, streams of water pour down the marble faces to whisk away foul-smelling excretions, which pour from a spout directly into a pothole planted with pebbles and grasses. The classically-influenced design pays tribute to adjacent historical attractions and acknowledges the fact that such facilities are required in order to keep the city clean.

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Of course, there’s one big problem with such pissoirs, even fancy ones like this: they’re only for men. While Copenhagen studio UiWE designed some efficient-looking urinals for women (pictured above), they’ve yet to catch on in any real way, forcing anyone who can’t use a conventional urinal to mad dash it around the city looking for accessible restrooms when they have to go.

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Architectural Camouflage: Garments Printed with Tile & Marble

28 May

[ By Steph in Design & Products & Packaging. ]

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Blend right into urban surfaces, from the walls of subway stations to the marble in museums and courthouses, with this line of architectural camouflage shirts, pants and accessories. A collaboration between design firm Snarkitecture and custom print company Print All Over Me, the line takes architectural patterns from public places all over New York City and translates them into fashion.

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The prints not only honor iconic minimalist patterns that have been an integral part of the city’s visual identity for decades, it enables the wearer to blend into urban environments. The effect can be pretty impressive, as seen in the collection’s promotional images.

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“The starting point was this idea of creating moments of architectural confusion, where you become visually lost within different material surfaces,” says Snarkitecture, a Brooklyn-based collaborative practice known for its unexpected installations, like all-white airball machines at Miami’s coolest modern parking garage.

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The Architectural Camouflage collection is available now at Print All Over Me, ranging from $ 38-$ 145, including a backpack, a baseball hat, a jumpsuit and a rain coat. Got an idea of your own? Anyone can upload images to create custom garments, home accessories and other items at PAOM.

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Check out more urban camouflage, from body painting and bizarre costumes to disappearing cars.

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