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Comment by diplodocusaur | Hacker News Reader

There is an artist (at least) that uses arrays of motorized parts to create a similar effect https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kV8v2GKC8WA mesmerizing

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"The electronics and the mechanics and the fabrication took me a year. Then it took me an afternoon to program the computer to actually activate it"

No knock on the artist, I particularly like the pom-pom display, but I get the sense that much of art today is about going roundabout ways, almost Rube Goldberg machine like, to achieve things could be presented in other ways with minimal effort. Sometimes this alternative mediation is interesting, but sometimes it almost feels dismissive of the metaphysical magic that is computing.

A lot of art is about "the process".

I mean, the resulting painting as done by Pollock or Mondriaan is pretty silly. Just splash some paint in a canvas, or draw some lines and use the "fill bucket tool" to create colored squares, right?

Yes, sure, it's about the process and about the inescapable context with postmodern conceptual art. Whether it's mere splashes I will leave aside, but Pollock and Mondrian precisely brought the consideration of the process to a new light, that's part of what makes them significant figures. Mondrian didn't have mspaint.exe, those geometries meant something different at the time. Also, I don't think Picasso would have been so infatuated by cubism if computers with triangle mesh rendering and solid modeling had been around.

> but Pollock and Mondrian precisely brought the consideration of the process to a new light, that's part of what makes them significant figures.

Oh. I thought people saw something I couldnt.

Linguistically, the art is the process, and the result is a “work of art”. One of my favourite misunderstood language quirks.

> to achieve things could be presented in other ways with minimal effort

You could imagine the art piece with minimal effort: no effort spent in making it. So in a way that's the purest form of art by your criticism. If only there was some way to achieve this, we'd be done.

This is quite close too : https://prusalab.cz/projekty/reflexe/

(Petr Vacek & Adam Cigler / Prusalab / Czech Republic)

I saw this on an industry fair and even spoke with one of the authors - its very impressive and cleverly done + they are continuously improving it. :)

I also had the chance to see it, and I agree with you : impressive. Glad to know it is still evolving.

That's fascinating - the artist does everything himself from fabrication to design. Looks incredible.

These isn't a similar effect but your link is very cool. I think the magic here is a static array of mirrors printed to create an image on another surface from multiple reflections of a bright source light.

Thank you for linking this.

I’ve always been interested in making large works of art out of many many small things(LED cubes, wooden blocks, etc…). Would love to explore these kinds of things more

Who is on the Cover of WIRED 1999? Can someone please find out.

check out this as well https://www.leva.io/projects/kinetic-wall

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