11/14/2005: Rock balancing
 

http://cellar.org/2005/rockbalance.jpg

Axlrosen finds this crazy rock balancing website, and suggests the above image from it all. Of all the various ways to spend your time, learning how to balance rocks and then taking video of yourself doing it is... low on my personal list, but the guy seems to get some spiritual fulfillment from it as he has a reflections page.

Which to me, begs the next question: why does everything these days need some sort of spiritual basis? Why can't rock balancing just be a cool thing to learn to do?

It reminds me of the "backwards photography" movies use sometimes. Like he had someone stack the rocks and hold them up (probably one person for each column there) then on cue they'd all move out of the camera view, picture was taken, and rocks fall ;p

1. He does this where it's always windy.
2. Birds landing on his work doesn't topple them.
3. I smell super glue. :eyebrow:

No no, this is real. I saw this done at the Exploratorium in San Fran. It was really cool.

I drive by a place where this is done and redone several times a week. I've often thought of stopping and snapping a picture. Ok, now I have something to connect it to. I really don't think there's anything but rocks and gravity and friction and patience involved.

Oh, and welcome to the cellar, Cory Wire. :welcome:

No shit? Really? That's amazing. Must have had big contact surfaces to keep a bird from toppling them. Of course he wouldn't post pictures of the ones the birds did topple. :lol:
Thanks Cory Wire, how'd you wander into the Cellar?

Confession?

Or, why can't we just call this GAY?

:corn: well, a lot of art IS gay.

I know, that baffled me. Maybe the fact that the rocks are so big and heavy makes them less likely to topple over?

Is there a picture on his site showing this or something?

Yes...go to UT's link in the first post and click on Gallery. Then down at the bottom of the gallery click on the next Gallery, etc, etc. 6 all together, I think. :cool:

They do a variation of that around here; this is a horrible example, but I don't have my camera on hand at the moment. And I'm lazy.

<img src="http://uoregon.edu/~gvidas/photos/rocks4.jpg">

(not pictured: the rest of the willamette, showing how far one would have to wade out to put those rocks up (pretty far.))

Thanks for the welcome, everybody. I love this site---been lurking a pretty long time. I think I found out about it from Feces Flinging Monkey.

Life must have balance, Danielson...
Very interesting. Not just the rock balancing but the fact that someone has THAT MUCH FU#@ING TIME TO WASTE. Well maybe it wasn't wasted... it got him a slot on the Cellar.