This was the 2010 winner of the annual Illusion Contest, “Magnet-Like Slopes” by Koukichi Sugihara
Meiji Institute for Advanced Study of Mathematical Sciences.
From Illusion Contest:
In this video, wooden balls roll up the slopes just as if they are pulled by a magnet. The behavior of the balls seems impossible, because it is against the gravity. The video is not a computer graphic, but a real scene. What is actually happening is that the orientations of the slopes are perceived oppositely, and hence the descending motion is misinterpreted as ascending motion. …

Panasonic presented a stunning art installation in which hundreds of LED lights drifted along the river. The small floating orbs represented a dance of fireflies with an accompanying light show by the enormous Tokyo Sky Tree in the background.

Creating natural poses for 3D models by using traditional input devices is difficult and time consuming. Now it can be as easy as playing with dolls… I mean action figures. Qumarion is a miniature mannequin which 3d artists can use to easily manipulate the pose of onscreen characters in real-time.

“Until now, handling 3D models was in some ways non-intuitive and difficult. Also, depending on the software, dragging can make movements unnatural. So we wanted to handle models more intuitively, by moving a mannequin. That’s why we’ve made QUMARION.”
Qumarion is a …

On June 11th the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation in Tokyo displayed Mitsubishi Electric’s “Geo-Cosmos”, the world’s first large-scale spherical OLED. It was breathtaking, the video below is proof.

The gigantic globe features 10,362 OLED panels which cover an aluminum sphere hanging 18 meters from the floor. The 6 meter orb is an upgrade to a previous model which featured regular LED panels. This spanking new OLED version features a resolution about 10 times greater than LED, more than 10 million pixels!
The globe was installed to celebrate the 10th …

Eye tracking technology for the disabled is not new, but the problem is that it certainly isn’t cheap. A quick Google search will show some systems can cost $20,000 or more. This makes the benefits of these devices inaccessible to many who need it it.
How about cutting the cost down to $50? That’s what the EyeWriter Initiative is all about. The EyeWriter was developed to be a completely opensource project that allows anyone to make their own eye tracking device from hardware that can be bought inexpensively. The team works …

iProject25 is 25 iPads synced together to form a huge interactive display. This was one of the most eye-catching and imaginative installations at this year’s Tokyo Designers Week.

So why 25 iPads? The design was commissioned by the Environmental Ministry of Japan as was a part of their “Challenge 25″ event to mark 25th anniversary of Tokyo Designers week, fitting isn’t it?. They wanted art that brought awareness to various global environmental problems. And they got this …

The creators, given their musical backgrounds, designed iProject25 with inspiration from the art of …

This bike operated image gallery is not for the lazy. You have to pedal your way through the pictures.

Projectors were placed on the ceiling at each side of the wall. The speed at which the viewer cycled directly affected the scroll speed of the pictures. The imagines were courtesy of Pixiv who enlisted the help of the interactive design company Team Lab to design this eye-catching display.
What’s not like about this installation? You can enjoy art while burning calories.

From designer sugiX comes “The visualization art of the breeze”

This piece aims to represent the movement of air with balloons that are illuminated when caught in an air current. The balloons seem to filled with helium or some lighter than air gas (no explanation was given “design secret”) When they are still, no light is emitted. When in motion they glow blue. The intensity of the light emitted depends on the strength of the breeze.

For this display at Tokyo Designers Week, the audience was led into a dark room. There …

Hikari no Tokei (Light Clock) is a stunning installment in Tokyo’s Seibu Department flagship store.

The clock has 4 LED surfaces on each side of a column. The time is displayed in animated typography and on every hour, viewers are treated to a light show accompanied by music.
THA, the company that designed the light clock have an awesome video of it in action. Check it out.

HIKARI NO TOKEI
via: THA