There are two types of recycling. There’s the kind where the useless is magically transformed back into the useful – and with perfect 20/20 hindsight, we all like to think that given enough time, we could have thought of that. The other kind is the realm of the artists.
However much you can buff and polish wood until it shines, it’s hardly the perfect material to make a mirror. But artist Daniel Rozin made one anyway – by reinventing mirrors. He constructed a wooden frame housing 830 small, motor-controlled wooden blocks linked to an outward-facing camera. Instead of reflecting light directly, this mirror interprets the image received by the camera, treats each block of wood as a side-lit pixel and "reflects" what the camera sees. And he’s done the same with a host of other materials, including trash.
Most recycling focusses on renewing utility, since we generally see trash as something post-beautiful. So let’s hear it for the artists, with their mirrors and chandeliers and bottlecap bowls. They’re having fun – and so should we.
Images: Daniel Rozin
– via DesignBoom
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