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Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Visual Art / Games Groovik's Cubism at Pacific Science Center

Posted by Jen Graves on Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 2:58 PM

In 2009, a giant glowing Rubik's Cube hovered against the sky at Burning Man. It was created by the artists, engineers, and scientists of local collective GroovLabs, and it was, in fact, a 35-foot-high, fully playable game based on the Rubik's Cube—built from a steel frame, covered in fabric, and illuminated from inside by colored LEDs—that can be played alone or collaboratively.

Now they're building a 26-foot version of it at Pacific Science Center; it opens October 1. Here it is, under construction the last few days.

Comments (4) RSS

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That this was THE iconic visual reference point at Burning Man in 2009. Glowing pretty colors, everyone was able use it to guide their nighttime bicycle sojourns.

More importantly, the fact it takes three people to solve it collectively is pretty frackin' awesome. Go see if you can communicate with two other people who are 40' away in order to solve it.

And DO solve it.. the 'win' display pattern is totally worth it.

Posted by treacle on September 13, 2011 at 4:51 PM

Just wondering...how can it be a 26-foot version when most of the artists working on it are taller than one-third of it? Unless they are all really short folks, the thing couldn't be more than 15-18 feet high/wide/deep, max. Am I missing something?

Posted by Gospodean on September 13, 2011 at 11:09 PM

It is just a touch over 15 feet on a side. That makes 15 *sqrt(3) = 26 feet tall from corner to opposite corner in its hanging configuration. Incidentally, the cube itself is almost exactly the same size as when it was at Burning Man, the difference between the 26 feet and 35 feet that Jen mentions is that the whole thing sat on top of a 9 foot pole when it was at Burning Man. At Pacific Science Center, there is a ceiling to hang it from - providing better aesthetics - and as you can see in the video, it pretty much fills the space from floor to ceiling anyway.

Posted by polymath on September 13, 2011 at 11:23 PM

At BRC2009, it was mounted on a 10' tall pole, ("The Toothpick", named for the scale). This install will hang from the ceiling.
But otherwise, it's the same, dear Groovik's Cube. :)

Posted by Becky Anderson, Cubist on September 14, 2011 at 8:18 AM