Jan 16th, 2016: 1.8 over London

[xoxoxoBruce]

An artist, Janet Echelman, suspended a net sculpture called 1.8 over London's busiest intersection, Oxford Circus.

Suspended 180 feet above Oxford Circus, the city's busiest intersections, the colorful floating form was inspired by 1.8 - "the length of time in microseconds that the earth’s day was shortened" as a result of Japan's devastating 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

"The sculpture’s form was inspired by data sets of the tsunami’s wave heights rippling across the entire Pacific Ocean," says the studio. "The artwork delves into content related to our complex interdependencies with larger cycles of time and our physical world. The sculpture’s net structure is a physical manifestation of interconnectedness – when any one element moves, every other element is affected."

Of course most people really don't care about all that, they like it because it looks cool.

"Lightweight and flexible, the sculpture is designed to travel to other cites around the world after its 2016 London premiere. It is constructed from technical fibers that are 15 times stronger than steel by weight, and custom color blends that Echelman combines with programmed colored light to create the final artwork.
Onlookers are invited to interact with 1.8 by using their smartphones to alter the colors and patterns being projected onto the installation. "These patterns are projected onto the monumental surface of the sculpture, and proceed to interact with one another, creating ripple effects for all to see," adds Echelman.

You can see some of her other fabric sculptures in Boston, Seattle, and Vancouver, here.

[DanaC]

Wow. That's pretty amazing.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Lots of spectators, on January 6th the population of London finally passed the 1939 record high. Between the evacuation and the army, the population dropped during the war, then dropped to 6,6 million over the next 30 years. Now it's back to 8.6 million.


If you go to this site, and scroll halfway down, there's a 9 minute TED talk about how she got into this.