Interactive Cloud Made with 15,000 Light Bulbs

Calgary-based artists Caitlind r.c. Brown and Wayne Garrett (previously) swung by Chicago this month and installed this amazing interactive lighting solution called Cloud Ceiling at Progress Bar. Constructed from hand-bent steel, reflective mylar, electronics, motion sensors, LEDs, and 15,000 re-appropriated incandescent light bulbs, the cloud is now a permanent fixture in the bar which opened earlier this week. Motion sensors embedded in the ceiling cause the cumulous surface of light bulbs to illuminate, effectively ‘mapping’ a lit path through the cloud as bar patrons move through the space.

Brown and Garret were featured in this space last year, for a similar interactive cloud installed at Nuit Blanche Calgary. You can learn more about Cloud Ceiling here.

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How to Avoid a Common Product Mistake Many Teams Make

I’ve been involved with technology product design in one form or another for nearly 25 years and seen one mistake consistently repeated.

The single biggest mistake most product teams make is building technology for what they believe the user would want rather than what the actual end-user needs.

From the experience in my earliest days of designing products for Windows and OS2 machines in the early 1990′s I developed a product philosophy, “Design for the novice, configure for the pro.”

Most technologists design for themselves and then test with uncorrelated user groups only months after product launch – if ever. If you’ve never sat through real user testing where users are given simple tasks to complete with little to no instructions on how to complete said tasks you will be shocked when you see how what you assume are the simplest set of tasks create the most difficult user experiences.

I learned the hard way.

When computers moved from “green screens” to Windows we – the educated, young, technophiles – easily grasped the concept. It was hard to imagine customer service reps who had learned every keystroke short-cut by heart on a green screen and weren’t eager to embrace the obvious future. We worked evenings and weekends getting a system read for public utility employees to be able to move into the future and have more power on their desktops than the dumb terminals they were used to.

The earliest user testing proved disastrous. The CSRs wanted nothing to do with drag-and-drop, point-and-click mouse commands. Computers were a necessary evil to getting their jobs done and frankly what they valued more than anything was maximized their hands on the keyboard (versus lifting one to grab a mouse) and processing orders efficiently (versus having more options, more power, more choices).

We live in world of choice and yet paradoxically as humans we generally want fewer choices. We want less complexity.

Think about your experience at a restaurant with too many options. The owner thinks they are giving you the ability to have anything you want and you are thinking, “oy, vey, can’t you just give me a few well curated options?  The less you frequent the restaurant the more this is true. You’re not a master of what’s on the menu and you don’t want to invest the time to parse through all of its complexities. So you turn to the waiter and say, “What do you recommend?” or your order from the specials.

Yet the restaurant owners, chefs and waiters know every item on the menu by heart and wonder, “What’s the big deal? Just choose what you like!”

Perhaps this could be a metaphor to remind you that the kitchen always finds it easy to know what’s on the menu while the casual, infrequent designer could care less. They came in just to eat the best you have on offer from a limited menu so they can enjoy themselves, not stress out, and get back to their lives.

Bad design was further reinforced through a decade+ of building apps in a Windows era where we technologists were trained by the ever expanding menu options in every Microsoft product. We all created mini Cheesecake Factories.

Design for the Novice, Configure for the Pro

My philosophy is simply. You design your product for the non-technologist. The “Normal.”

Give people fewer options, fewer choices to make. Give them the bare essentials. Design products for your mom.

Know that when you look at the data you’ll find out the overwhelming majority of your users will come to your application infrequently and so you can’t assume they can easily orient themselves. If they can’t, they won’t return.

I know you want to build really powerful features into your product. You want to build in the capabilities that YOU would want. And frankly after launch you’ll get a laundry list of all the things your power-users tell you needs to be in your product to get the job done.

But here’s the thing.

Said power users will always find the features they need in your product even if they’re hidden away. Give them a configure button somewhere. From there give them options to soup up the product and add the complexity that goes with newfound power.

But make sure you keep it hidden. Make sure the novice can’t stumble across it and get confused.

And don’t take my word for it. Do actual usability testing and make sure to include users not from your ordinary circle of friends or similar cohort.

What you assumed was “novice functionality” will likely be too hard.

We built our product at Koral in 2005 with this design philosophy in mind. After we were acquired by Salesforce they asked us to do proper usability testing with well designed tasks to complete and we turned on a camera to record the sessions and review the basics.

• Upload a file to our system
• Create a new folder
• Move your file to the new folder
• Send your file to friends
• etc.

It was simply mind boggling how what we assumed were intuitive, simple, no-brainer tasks were not well understood by basic users so unless we were only building our product for San Francisco-based techies we were going to struggle to scale.

I have worked with teams who fully embraced the user testing espoused in the Lean Startup movement and they often build much better products by watching feedback earlier in the design cycle.

So when you’re doing your next product review make sure to question all of your assumptions.

When you’re adding more menu options ask yourself whether you should leave stuff out.

Remember that often Less is More.

Don’t build for yourself or your friends who use your product and say, “wouldn’t it be nice if you could just …”

And certainly don’t build for your VC. They often have little or no design experience.

Sure, your friends and VCs are smart so I’m not saying don’t take input.

I’m simply saying …

Design for the novice.

And no matter how often I recommend this for teams with whom I work I still always hear the feedback, “Yeah, but, we just need to …” as an excuse to add more functionality back.

Hit the user testing. Find out for sure.

And in a mobile world I’m sure you know that this is even more important. People are opting for apps with less functionality and more easily adopted.

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WYSIWTFFTWOMG!

I get the content in Word, copy into the various boxes in the CMS and then see how it looks. Normally I spot a few typos, or it doesn’t appear where I want it to, then I have to go back and find the article again – which isn’t so bad, it’s normally at the top. The real pain is when I have to add another link to that list over there. (whispers) Normally I ask James (a developer) to do that for me, though as I can’t do it.

This was a conversation I had with a person recently about how they use their CMS. A real-life content person. I say content person, not ‘creator’ as you may have noticed she doesn’t write the content. She just ‘gets it’. She’s a piece in the publishing workflow. A cog in a machine. And our tools are failing her and are only going to get worse.

In that workflow, there is a bit that’s a clear trend amongst the people I’ve spoken to about this.

then see how it looks.

And that’s the thing, right there.

Since we’ve been using computers to make websites we’ve tried to make them like print. Of course, early on, that was fair enough. It was familiar. We knew the rules and tried to make the web like it. Even now, with the realisation that the web has changed – or rather, we’re being honest to the way the web is. It never really changed, we just tried to make it something it wasn’t – we’re still enforcing a print-like mental model on it. Not necessarily us designers and developers, though. This is coming from people who write and manage content. Just like printing out an email before they send it, they will want to preview a website to see how it looks.

The problem is this: The question content people ask when finishing adding content to a CMS is ‘how does this look?’. And this is not a question a CMS can answer any more – even with a preview. How we use the web today has meant that the answer to that questions is, ‘in what?’.

WYSIWTFFTWOMG!

Let me first off define what I see WYSIWYG. WYSIWYG is not a limited toolbar for adding semantic value to your document. The kind of toolbar you find on Medium, or on Basecamp. As you can see they are similar. They are used for applying semantics to document structure; giving words emphasis, making unordered lists, or numbered lists, making words headlines. However, they’re not there for the user to get creative. They do not change the colour of a word.

When I think WYSIWYG, I think of the Word toolbar. This type of WYSIWYG is for adding tables, images, forms, type and colour. It’s a toolkit to create pages of content. Just like desktop publishing. And that’s the dangerous thing. Content creators are used to having these tools at their disposal so they can craft their document. Why? Because writing isn’t done in a CMS, it’s done elsewhere.

Times -are changing- have changed

It’s been a turbulent few years for web designers and developers. We’ve had to relearn what we’ve created and finally acknowledge – through the timeliness of Responsive Design – that the web is a fluid and chaotic place, and we should be embracing it and not making it like print. We’ve learnt to deal with the loss of control. The problem is, though, our content people are still thinking of pages. They’re still thinking of previewing. Of designing for the desktop. They’re writing in Word and fine with it.

So, that’s the challenge. How can we help people – just as we have – relearn how the web is now?

Just like when people have a content management problem, a lot of people are turning to technology for the answers. And just like content management problems, my experience is software can’t fix it. Because it’s a people problem, not a software problem.

The three places of content management

There are three spaces * for content people – not creators, because not all content people create loads of content. Some just manage it – push it from here to there. Those places are:

1. A space for writing. For writing and structuring.
2. A space for management. For adding meta data, workflow, configuration and managing roles and people.
3. The website space. Basically your website. A place where you begin the access user journey. Or preview your content. Generally the starting points for lots of little administration tasks.

• There are other spaces, too. The developer space, where the site is administered and created, managed and evolved. Sometimes this is through an administration interface, but not always. Sometimes it’s just through an API.

The problem I see is that the CMS tries to deal with all three spaces equally well. And as such, generally fails to deliver an optimal experience because it’s trying to do too much. What if your content management system was actually three distinct applications designed to work together? Just a thought.

But, back to WYSIWYG.

The issue with WYSIWYG for me is that by using them the content person is considering the content as what they see. But content is more than that. Especially if it has meta data, and is split up and compiled from here and there. A ‘page’ maybe a dynamic template pulling in content from a dozen places. How do you change meta data there?

If we consider the majority use-cases of correcting typos, restructuring slightly, or small on the fly editing, then the smaller toolbars for adding semantic value are useful. But for most use cases, a WYSIWYG is not useful for content people. It’s just familiar.

Inline-access, not inline-editing

One of the other pain points of a complex dynamic website, where ‘pages’ are created with bits of content from all over the place is ‘where the hell do I go to find that bit of content to edit it?’. That is a painful moment in a content person’s daily life. Normally, after watching them, they go off deep into search, or ask someone else who knows better. Accessing these smaller nuggets of logic-based content is problematic. This is why inline-editing and WYSIWYG is coming to the fore – addressing the use case in the live environment.

Why is this a problem?

As I said before, it’s hiding the truth. That being, the content is more than you can see. Instead of inline editing of the content, why not just make the start of that journey a little easier? Why not provide a way of quickly getting to exactly that bit of content with a link? There we will see all of the stuff that is the content but not the words: the display logic, taxonomies, meta data etc. But if we want to change a type, we can do that with our little toolbar.

Not one tool, but many. Not one way, but many.

Structured content is the right way to go. It makes our content portable and malleable. In fact, it makes it much more useful. Slapping a WYSIWYG on top of a form field is not the way to go. That’s not structured. Live WYSIWYG is not the way to go for large-scale websites because it reinforces that content is just what you see. When, in fact, a piece of content could have a whole bunch of other headlines and summaries that would only be displayed in certain contexts, along with meta data and rules. We need access to ALL THE CONTENT and provide simple, little tools to let people make typo changes and apply semantic structure and the like once they’re looking at the content in a staging environment.

‘How does this look?’

should change to:

‘How does this read?’

Device agnostic. Screen size independent and devoid of design. Let’s help content people focus on what the words and pictures are, rather than what the words and pictures look like.

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The Open Hand Project: A Low Cost Robotic Hand (Indiegogo Campaign)

What is it? The Open Hand Project is an open source project with the goal of making robotic prosthetic hands more accessible to amputees. The Dextrus hand is the realization of this goal, it’s a robotic hand that can be put together for well under £650 ($1000) and offers much of the functionality of a human hand.

Who’s it For? The Dextrus hand is for anyone who wants an advanced robotic hand. This could be an amputee who wants a little more than a metal hook, a researcher who’s looking into control systems for telepresence robots or perhaps a hobbyist who is making a humanoid robot.

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Boston Dynamics didn’t only introduced the WildCat today. They also shared informations about Atlas and the LS3 aka Big Dog. Atlas - our beloved anthropomorphic robot - is now able to operate on rough terrain:

The video shows Atlas balancing as it walks on rocky terrain and when pushed from the side. The balance and control system places the feet and swings the arms and upper body to stay upright. The controller uses inertial, kinematic and load data from Atlas’s sensors. Atlas is being developed by Boston Dynamics with funding from DARPA’s M3 program. For more information visit www.BostonDynamics.com 

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Robots at Work and Play

Advancements in robotics are continually taking place in the fields of space exploration, health care, public safety, entertainment, defense, and more. These machines — some fully autonomous, some requiring human input — extend our grasp, enhance our capabilities, and travel as our surrogates to places too dangerous or difficult for us to go. Gathered here are recent images of robotic technology at the beginning of the 21st century, including robotic insurgents, NASA’s Juno spacecraft on its way to Jupiter, and a machine inside an archaeological dig in Mexico. [32 photos]

Bipedal humanoid robot “Atlas”, primarily developed by the American robotics company Boston Dynamics, is presented to the media during a news conference at the University of Hong Kong, on October 17, 2013. The 6-foot (1.83 m) tall, 330-pound (149.7 kg) robot is made of graded aluminum and titanium and costs HK$ 15 million ($1.93 million). It is capable of a variety of natural movements, including dynamic walking, calisthenics and user programmed behaviors, according to the University of Hong Kong’s press release. (Reuters/Tyrone Siu)

2

French patient Florian Lopes, 22, holds a tree branch with his new bionic hand at the readaptation center of Coubert, southeast of Paris, on June 3, 2013. Lopes lost three fingers in an accident at the end of 2011 and was the first French patient to receive this type of artificial limb, worth 42,000 euros, already used in Scotland or the US. (Thomas Samson/AFP/Getty Images)

3

An MVF-5 Multifunctional Robotic Firefighting System by company Dok-Ing sprays water canon as part of a TIEMS annual conference entitled “Robotics in emergency and crisis management, use of UGVs, from Military and EOD to Civil protection” at the Bouches-du-Rhone Fire Department school (SDIS 13) in Velaux, southern France. (Bertrand Langlois/AFP/Getty Images)

4

A man holds a Telenoid R1 robot during the Innorobo 2013 fair (Innovation Robotics Summit) as companies and research centers present their latest technologies in robotics in Lyon, on March 19, 2013. The Telenoid R1 is designed as a telepresence robot, to serve as a remote presence for a person, such as a grandchild, and allow people to communicate in a more natural setting.(Reuters/Robert Pratta)

5

Two four-legged robots, part of DARPA’s Legged Squad Support System (LS3) program, run through a field during testing. The semi-autonomous LS3 machines are being designed to help carry heavy loads through rugged terrain, interacting with troops in a similar way to a trained pack animal. (DARPA)

6

On October 9, NASA’s Juno spacecraft flew by Earth using the home planet’s gravity to get a boost needed to reach Jupiter. The JunoCam caught this image of Earth, and other instruments were tested to ensure they work as designed during a close planetary encounter. Juno was launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on August 5, 2011. Juno’s rocket, the Atlas 551, was only capable of giving Juno enough energy or speed to reach the asteroid belt, at which point the Sun’s gravity pulled Juno back toward the inner solar system. The Earth flyby gravity assist increases the spacecraft’s speed to put it on course for arrival at Jupiter on July 4, 2016.(NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems)

7

In this October 6, 2013 photo, laser lights outline a robot during a performance at Robot Restaurant in Tokyo.(AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

8

A SWAT robot, a remote-controlled small tank-like vehicle with a shield for officers, is demonstrated for the media in Sanford, Maine, on, April 18, 2013. Howe & Howe Technologies, a Waterboro, Maine company, says their device keeps SWAT teams and other first responders safe in standoffs and while confronting armed suspects. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

9

Graduate student Baker Potts handles a prototype robotic eel in a pool inside the engineering building at the University of New Orleans, on October 2, 2012 in New Orleans. The robotic eel might be able to wriggle through dangerous waters with almost no wake, letting it move on little power and with little chance of radar detection as it looks for underwater mines. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert) 

10

President Barack Obama shakes a robotic hand as he looks at science fair projects in the State Dinning Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., on April 22, 2013. Obama hosted the White House Science Fair and celebrated the student winners of a broad range of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) competitions from across the country. (Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images) 

11

A robotic dragon from the medieval spectacle “The Dragon’s Sting” burns Christmas trees in Furth im Wald, Germany, on January 24, 2013. (AP Photo/dpa/Armin Weigel)

12

A robotic camera platform records Norway’s driver Andreas Mikkelsen and Finnish co-driver Mikko Markkula as the drive their Volkswagen Polo R WRC during the qualifying stage of the FIA World Rally Championship of Italy near Olbia, on the Italian island of Sardinia on June 20, 2013. (Andreas Solaro/AFP/Getty Images)

13

The CEOs of Marathon set and prepare Robotic Moving Targets for use in the Moving Target Technique Limited Objective Experiment 2 at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, on September 24, 2013. The robots, developed by the Australian company Marathon, present a target the size of an average person, fall over when shot and can simulate average walking and running paces from four to eight miles an hour. The experiment tests the most effective technique and method to engage moving targets with the M-4 carbine and M-27 infantry automatic rifle. (U.S. Marine Corps/Pfc. Eric T. Keenan) 

14

Robots deliver dishes to customers at a Robot Restaurant in Harbin, Heilongjiang province, China, on January 12, 2013. Opened in June 2012, the restaurant has gained fame in using a total of 20 robots, which range in heights of 1.3-1.6 meters (4.27-5.25 ft), to cook meals and deliver dishes. The robots can work continuously for five hours after a two-hour charge, and are able to display over 10 expressions on their faces and say basic welcoming sentences to customers. (Reuters/Sheng Li) 

15

A mobile fish pen system, developed by Lockheed Martin, constantly moves along the ocean’s surface, in waters over 12,000 ft deep, working to solve the potential problems of impacts on water quality or impacts on the seafloor. The system operates by integrating satellite communications, remote sensing data feeds, robotics, motor controls, and command and control and situational awareness software. (PRNewsFoto/Lockheed Martin)

16

A Toshiba decontamination robot, for work inside a nuclear plant, during a demonstration at Toshiba’s technical center in Yokohama, suburban Tokyo, on February 15, 2013. The crawler robot blasts dry ice particles against contaminated floors or walls and will be used for the decontamination in TEPCO’s stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant. (Yoshikazu Tsuno/AFP/Getty Images)

17

Danish scientist Henrik Scharfe (right) poses with his Geminoid-DK robot during its presentation at the National Robotics Olympiad in San Jose, on August 16, 2013. The Geminoid-DK is a tele-operated Android in the geminoid series and is made to appear as an exact copy of its creator, Professor Scharfe. (Reuters/Juan Carlos Ulate)

18

This image provided by NASA is one of a series of still photos documenting the process to release the SpaceX Dragon-2 spacecraft from the International Space Station, on March 26, 2013. The spacecraft, filled with experiments and old supplies, can be seen in the grasp of the Space Station Remote Manipulator System’s robot arm or CanadArm2 after it was undocked from the orbital outpost. The Dragon was scheduled to make a landing in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of California, later in the day. The moon can be seen at center.(AP Photo/NASA)

19

Zac Vawter, a 31-year-old software engineer from Seattle, Washington, prepares to climb to the 103rd story of the Willis Tower using the world’s first neural-controlled Bionic leg in Chicago, on November 4, 2012. According to the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, their Center for Bionic Medicine has worked to develop technology that allows amputees like Vawter to better control prosthetics with their own thoughts. (Reuters/John Gress)

20

Camels ridden by robot jockeys compete during a weekly camel race at the Kuwait Camel Racing club in Kebd, on January 26, 2013. The robots are controlled by trainers, who follow in their vehicles around the track. (Reuters/Stephanie McGehee)

21

NASA’s new Earth-bound rover, GROVER, which stands for both Greenland Rover and Goddard Remotely Operated Vehicle for Exploration and Research, in Summit Camp, the highest spot in Greenland, on May 10, 2013. GROVER is an autonomous, solar-operated robot that carries a ground-penetrating radar to examine the layers of Greenland’s ice sheet. Its findings will help scientists understand how the massive ice sheet gains and loses ice. After loading and testing the rover’s radar and fixing a minor communications glitch, the team began the robot’s tests on the ice on May 8, defying winds of up to 23 mph (37 kph) and temperatures as low as minus 22 F (minus 30 C). (Lora Koenig/NASA Goddard) 

22

Humanoid robot bartender “Carl” gestures to guests at the Robots Bar and Lounge in the eastern German town of Ilmenau, on July 26, 2013. “Carl”, developed and built by mechatronics engineer Ben Schaefer who runs a company for humanoid robots, prepares spirits for the mixing of cocktails and is able to interact with customers in small conversations. (Reuters/Fabrizio Bensch)

23

An X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System demonstrator launches from the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77) after completing its first arrested landing on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier. The landing marks the first time any unmanned aircraft has completed an arrested landing at sea. (U.S. Navy/Mass Communication Specialist 3nd Class Christopher A. Liaghat)

24

Bipedal humanoid robot “Atlas”, primarily developed by the American robotics company Boston Dynamics, practises tai chi during a news conference at the University of Hong Kong, on October 17, 2013. (Reuters/Tyrone Siu)

25

A robot helps passengers to find their way through the baggage claim area of the Geneva International Airport, on June 13, 2013. Geneva airport is using the autonomous robot to accompany travelers to a dozen destinations such as trolleys, ATM, lost luggage room, showers or toilets. (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images) 

26

A view from the front hazcam of NASA’s Mars rover Opportunity, on Sol 3412 (August 29, 2013), still operating, driving across Mars’ surface and collecting data nearly 10 years since its January, 2004 landing. (NASA/JPL) 

27

Kokoro displays the company’s humanoid robot called “Actroid” (left) and its internal workings (center) at Sanrio’s headquarters in Tokyo, on February 7, 2013. (Yoshikazu Tsuno/AFP/Getty Images) 

28

Rosser Pryor, Co-owner and President of Factory Automation Systems, sits next to a new high-performance industrial robot at the company’s Atlanta facility, on January 15, 2013. Pryor, who cut 40 of 100 workers since the recession, says while the company is making more money now and could hire ten people, it is holding back in favor of investing in automation and software.(AP Photo/David Goldman)

29

Chinese inventor Tao Xiangli welds a component of his self-made robot (rear) in the yard of his house in Beijing, on May 15, 2013. Tao, 37, spent about 150,000 yuan (USD 24,407) and more than 11 months to build the robot out of recycled scrap metals and electric wires that he bought from a second-hand market. The robot is 2.1 meters tall and around 480 kilograms (529 lbs) in weight.(Reuters/Suzie Wong)

30

Photographers take photos of Toshiba Corp’s new four-legged robot which the company says is capable of carrying out investigative and recovery work at tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant during a demonstration at the company’s Yokohama complex in Yokohama, on November 21, 2012. The new tetrapod robot, which is able to walk on uneven surfaces, avoid obstacles and climb stairs, integrates a camera and dosimeter and is able to investigate the condition of nuclear power plants by remote-controlled operation. (Reuters/Yuriko Nakao)

31

A robot used to explore ruins in the entrance of a tunnel in an archaeological section of the Quetzalcoatl Temple near the Pyramid of the Sun at the Teotihuacan archaeological site, about 60 km (37 miles) north of Mexico City, on April 22, 2013. The robot has discovered three ancient chambers in the last stretch of unexplored tunnel at Mexico’s famed Teotihuacan archaeological site, the first robotic discovery of its kind in the Latin American country. Named Tlaloc II after the Aztec god of rain, the robot was first lowered into the depths of the 2,000-year-old tunnel under the Quetzalcoatl Temple to check it was safe for human entry. After months of exploration, the remote-controlled vehicle has relayed back video images to researchers of what appears to be three ancient chambers located under the Mesoamerican city’s pyramid. (Reuters/Henry Romero)

32

An engineer makes an adjustment to the robot “The Incredible Bionic Man” at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., on October 17, 2013. The robot is the world’s first-ever functioning bionic man made of prosthetic parts and artificial organ implants. (Reuters/Joshua Roberts)

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200 Fluorescent Lights at Frye Art Museum

Through Hollow Lands is a 2012 installation by visual artists Etta Lilienthal and Ben Zamora of LILENTHAL|ZAMORA at Frye Art Museum in Seattle. The suspended labyrinth was constructed from 200 fluorescent lights in various configurations, creating a sort of immersive geometric canopy of light. If you liked this, also check out the work ofEsther Stocker. Photos above by Malcolm Smith courtesy Frye Art Museum. (viacolossal submissions)

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Swing to Infinity Inside Thilo Frank’s Mirrored Room

Measuring just 4 x 4 x 8 meters this small, windowless room might normally be considered a claustrophobic nightmare if it were’t lined from floor to ceiling with dozens of mirrors creating a reflective universe that seems to stretch into infinity. Titled “The Phoenix is closer than it appears,” the room was constructed by artist Thilo Frank at the Museum of Modern Art in Aalborg, Denmark. The Matrix-like space also features a swing that allows visitors an opportunity to view hundreds of cloned reflections swinging at all possible angles. I can think of quite a few illicit substances that should probably not be consumed before entering this room. (via designboom, myedol)

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