Jesus Christ.

October 26, 2009 10:43 AM

The Last Supper recreated out of 4,050 Rubik's Cubes. (SLYT)
posted by gman (36 comments total)

It was created by five artists from Toronto and measures 8.5 by 17 feet.
posted by gman at 10:45 AM on October 26, 2009

You could at least link to them.
posted by DU at 10:49 AM on October 26, 2009 [2 favorites]

This would be a good use of the sticker method of cube solving.
posted by iamkimiam at 10:50 AM on October 26, 2009

You could at least link to them.

Jesus. I could solve the Rubik's Cube by the time it took their gallery pictures to load.
posted by mazola at 10:51 AM on October 26, 2009 [2 favorites]

Yeah. I tried loading Cube Works' homepage before I posted and when nothing popped up, I decided against linking to it.
posted by gman at 10:55 AM on October 26, 2009

See also Space Invader's Rubikcubism. I'm not a big fan of it, but he's been at it for a few years now.
posted by Nelson at 10:56 AM on October 26, 2009

That's an impressive achievement right there.

Great pics on the main site too. That said, I'd really like to see an end to the 6 billion and one artistic takes on Heath Ledger's Joker that seemed to be all over the place these days.
posted by panboi at 11:01 AM on October 26, 2009

And thank gog the Cube Works site didn't have one of those annoying flash inter-

Oh, nevermind.

The one thing I wish they'd done was back out further. Even as far back as they went it doesn't resolve well enough for my tastes. I guess this is why these things are best seen live.
posted by cjorgensen at 11:07 AM on October 26, 2009

No huge donut-halo.
posted by qvantamon at 11:13 AM on October 26, 2009

So that's what cubism is. I always wondered.
posted by FishBike at 11:17 AM on October 26, 2009 [3 favorites]

"Guinness...has recognized The Last Supper as the largest work of it's kind..."

They must use that word differently in Canada than over here.
posted by yiftach at 11:23 AM on October 26, 2009

See also: classic album covers rendered in Rubik-vision
posted by not_on_display at 11:23 AM on October 26, 2009

Totally neat.
posted by Lutoslawski at 12:16 PM on October 26, 2009

A lot of work for a novelty item . . . and the reason this strange art project merits discussion is . . . ?
posted by bearwife at 12:29 PM on October 26, 2009

I won't be impressed until they get the cubes to recombine Transformer-style into a separate work of art.
posted by scrutiny at 1:07 PM on October 26, 2009

Wow, that's pretty impressive. Then again, I usually like unconventional art. If they combine Rubik's Cubes and Legos into some massive art project, I'll be having seizures because of the awesomeness.
posted by Eclipsante at 1:17 PM on October 26, 2009

Nifty. See also: The Last Round (featuring 13 1/4 MeFites.)
posted by lholladay at 1:20 PM on October 26, 2009

Burhanistan: Dude, an entire wall of self-configuring Rubik's cubes that can spontaneously assemble themselves into mosaics of The Last Supper or any image you feed into the system? And do it, like, really fast? You just Blew. My. Mind. That would be impossibly awesome and robotics people around the world need to get to work on this sooner than yesterday.
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis at 1:41 PM on October 26, 2009

I built a wall-sized dynamic Rubik's cube mirror once, but it made my skin look blotchy, so I took it apart.
posted by brain_drain at 1:44 PM on October 26, 2009

Hmm...The Amazon, the Sahara, Siberia, Tibet and the Northwest Territories. Never thought of any of those places as remote until I looked at that map.
posted by Rarebit Fiend at 1:49 PM on October 26, 2009

I think the Rarebit Fiend is dreaming of a different thread, yegads.
posted by kuujjuarapik at 2:01 PM on October 26, 2009

Funny, I thought I was the only one contemplating the isolation of parts of humanity after looking at all those Rubik's cubes.
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis at 2:02 PM on October 26, 2009

So, Chuck Close meets da Vinci in a twee, retro hell?

Enjoy your 15 minutes, kids.
posted by felix betachat at 2:18 PM on October 26, 2009

Nice!

Though it's no big trick to solve one side to show an arbitrary combination of the 6 colors. A more impressive achievement would be to have the back of the installation show a second image.
posted by rlk at 2:33 PM on October 26, 2009

4000 cubes / 5 people = 800 cubes / person
800 cubes / 2 months = 400 cubes / person / month
400 / month = about 13 cubes / day per person

Somebody should tell them they can pop them apart with a screwdriver, instead of solving them the hard way.
posted by digsrus at 3:26 PM on October 26, 2009

A strange combo? Not in Toronto!

I'm so using that now.
posted by lemonfridge at 3:26 PM on October 26, 2009

Pretty cool. I was also impressed that the NBC guy pronounced "Toronto" correctly.
posted by maudlin at 3:29 PM on October 26, 2009

Flagged as LURK MOAR.

uhhh. stupid newbie question . . . . but what the hell does that mean?
posted by Think_Long at 5:45 PM on October 26, 2009

It means he thinks I'm either an idiot or a philistine, Think Long. He's suggesting I silently read and follow ("lurk") for a lot longer ("moar") without providing my view that this particular expenditure of effort might not be all that worthwhile.
posted by bearwife at 5:52 PM on October 26, 2009

I was actually hoping to get some comment about what others see in this piece of art, not criticizing the decision to post about it in the first place.
posted by bearwife at 6:02 PM on October 26, 2009

I think it's a cool idea that looks neat. That's what I got out of it. Seriously.
posted by josher71 at 6:10 PM on October 26, 2009

I may be new at commenting but I promise have not been, am not and will not be snarky. Apology accepted and as I find this piece of art quite challenging, would be interested in comments to explain to me the motivation for all the work that went into creating it.
posted by bearwife at 6:16 PM on October 26, 2009

It was kind of a harsh redress, but there it was. The "flagged as" was a kind of in joke where people substitute a rejoinder for a reason for flagging something, implying that the specific reason they disagreed with something was in the dropdown list of flag reasons

got it. I assumed that the caps referred to one of the many acronyms that I have yet to learn
posted by Think_Long at 6:26 PM on October 26, 2009

I may be new at commenting but I promise have not been, am not and will not be snarky. Apology accepted and as I find this piece of art quite challenging, would be interested in comments to explain to me the motivation for all the work that went into creating it.

Because you can? Nobody had done it yet? It'd be cool? Beats watching TV? Improves manual dexterity? Good use for all those spare Rubik's Cubes? Signifies a triumph of order over chaos? As an exercise in project planning and execution? To make a playfully irreverent comment on the loftiness of so-called "great art"? To pay tribute to both Ernö Rubik, inventor of a famous mathematical puzzle, and Leonardo DaVinci, talented inventor himself who may even have greatly enjoyed said puzzle? As a commentary on timelessness vs. disposability? To indulge a fondness for limited color palettes and blocky resolution? The desire to create something a little over-the-top and unusual for its own sake?
posted by scrowdid at 3:02 AM on October 27, 2009

Those were just some ideas off the top of my head, it may have seemed snarkier than I meant it. I'm thinking it was done because it sounded more interesting than watching TV and was a way to pay tribute to a famous piece of art through unconventional use of another famous piece of art. Also, the blocky color palette is fun to play with and it appeals to anyone who's done art using computer pixels. Add to that the fact that it's fun to 1) build things and 2) to get people saying, "wow, you built that thing", throw in an impressive amount of dedication to a project (however useless others might say it is), and I can pretty much see why this got done.
posted by scrowdid at 3:20 AM on October 27, 2009

Yes, I admit I didn't think of any of those things. That's why I keep reading mifi, lots of thoughtful and imaginative people post and comment here. Thanks, sincerely and not snarkily.
posted by bearwife at 8:56 AM on October 27, 2009