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Zoetrope Sculptures are Cool, Trippy

Zoetropes may have been invented thousands of years ago (Wikipedia says around 100 BCE), the technology can still be used to today for some very cool effects. I first saw the 3D zoetrope effect at a Blue Man Group show with “dancers” off the side, and again at the Animation building at Disney California Adventures. However, I’ve not yet seen anything as cool as this, from designer John Edmark, professor of design at Stanford University: Fibonacci Zoetrope Sculptures from Pier 9 on Vimeo. The sculptures are 3D-printed, then animated under a strobe or a camera with an extremely fast shutter speed to achieve the movement effects. Cool. I highly recommend looking around his site, his mathematics-inspired sculptures are eye-catching as… Read More »Zoetrope Sculptures are Cool, Trippy

Fetishizing Incandescents

A recent post on a production-related website talked about the gradual shift toward LEDs and fluorescent lighting as a double-edged sword – citing the uncomfortableness of the spectral qualities of fluorescent and LED light as a reason that people will simply leave areas lit with these sources and seek out full(er)-spectrum lighting such as daylight or incandescent. The article offers some of the standard arguments I’ve read over the years about why we like incandescent lighting, its relationship to the spectrum of firelight, and how an office lit with 5,550 Kelvin fluorescents feels totally different than daylight at 5,550 Kelvin daylight. This is where the author and I agree, perhaps for different reasons. I personally despise fluorescent lighting, especially the… Read More »Fetishizing Incandescents