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September 27, 2010 9:54 AM   Subscribe

 
Somebody, anybody, please film a kung-fu fight around this thing.
posted by theodolite at 9:58 AM on September 27, 2010


Does it kill pigeons?
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 9:59 AM on September 27, 2010


A former co-worker's father once tested some goggle-like apparatus that inverted one's vision. He wore them for a couple of days. The strangest thing was about 12 hours in, his brain rewired, his vision switched and he saw everything right-side up. It wasn't like getting used to driving in reverse, slowly becoming more confident; HIS VISION SUDDENLY FLOPPED.

After he took off the apparatus, his normal vision was upside-down! In another 12 hours, though, it re-flopped back to normal.
posted by infinitewindow at 10:03 AM on September 27, 2010 [11 favorites]


An Indian Christo?
posted by MikeF7033 at 10:05 AM on September 27, 2010


I met him a few years ago. Nice guy + great artist.
posted by R. Mutt at 10:06 AM on September 27, 2010


I saw a doco on him a few weeks ago and was thoroughly impressed. Not everything he does will resonate with everyone I'm sure, but his works are epic attempts at creating shared distorted spaces. I would love to see some of his installations.
posted by peacay at 10:18 AM on September 27, 2010


note to infinitewindow, this is a well-known effect. The lens in the eye actually inverts the image that is projected onto the retina; at an early age the brain learns to compensate for the inversion, to obtain more accurate vision. The brain can be re-trained, either to stop inverting or to resume inverting.
posted by grizzled at 10:20 AM on September 27, 2010


It is the first of Kapoor's works to have been put in water

The thing I like about Kapoor is that there's not much to say about him. It either resonates or it doesn't, so journalists really have to grope for captions other than "this one is also a curved mirror."

An Indian Christo?
In no way that I can think of other than having his work in a park. He is Indian, though.
posted by cmoj at 10:34 AM on September 27, 2010 [2 favorites]


I hope no skydivers go astray over this pointy one.
posted by chavenet at 10:37 AM on September 27, 2010


Larry Ellison decapitated by hard drive platter after freak database server explosion.
posted by Artw at 10:47 AM on September 27, 2010 [1 favorite]


Anish Kapoor is great. I had the pleasure of seeing some of his work in the Bilbao Guggenheim earlier this year. The mirror room was hilarious not only for seeing your own distortion but also to watch the other people many of whom seemed slightly freaked out by the experience or hurried along. My wife and I spent about half an hour just in that room; giggling.
The depth of color in works such as this is amazing; that disk in the center is not a disk, it's another shape like the ones at the sides.
There seems to be a huge sense of fun in his work. Great stuff. Thanks for the post Artw.
Here's a slideshow of some more of his art.
posted by adamvasco at 11:11 AM on September 27, 2010 [2 favorites]


I'd like to turn that artist upside down.
posted by Postroad at 11:11 AM on September 27, 2010


*Frowns*.
posted by benzenedream at 11:17 AM on September 27, 2010 [4 favorites]


Sky Mirror Red sseems to have been produced in conjunction with the latest Jasper Fforde novel - the mirror is a lovely shade of Redlax?
posted by GuyZero at 11:24 AM on September 27, 2010


For those who don't already know about it, Kapoor's most famous work in the U.S. is probably "Cloud Gate" (aka the Bean) in Chicago's Millennium Park, which does fascinating things with the viewer's reflection and perspective as well. I spent hours looking at and photographing it last time I was in Chicago.
posted by aught at 11:42 AM on September 27, 2010


I saw Anish Kapoor's astonishing installation "Marsysas" in the Tate Modern a few years back. There are no photos that can possibly do it justice, but it blew me clean the fuck away in a way that visual art rarely does.
posted by Decani at 11:52 AM on September 27, 2010


People make fun of the Bean a lot, but I think it's pretty fucking awesome. Can't wait to see it again when I visit the old Windy City next week. I have to admit I'm less sure on the Crown Fountain though.
posted by kmz at 12:00 PM on September 27, 2010


Those are really neat, especially the inverting mirror. I hope Sky Mirror doesn't accidentally cook someone though.
posted by lucidium at 12:11 PM on September 27, 2010


Yeah, when "the Bean" was announced for Chicago, I was skeptical - on paper, I thought it sounded dumb. But when I saw it in real life, I just found it undeniably gorgeous. It's so much fun to explore what it does to the reflections of the city around it.

These pieces in Kensington Gardens look pretty cool too.
posted by dnash at 12:34 PM on September 27, 2010


After he took off the apparatus, his normal vision was upside-down! In another 12 hours, though, it re-flopped back to normal.

This sounds like something that would cause massive headaches.
posted by Pope Guilty at 2:43 PM on September 27, 2010


I love this guy. The stuff he makes, like the bean in Chicago, are so wonderfully surreal. He's making the world a more surreal place, and that is a good thing.
posted by malapropist at 4:11 PM on September 27, 2010


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