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#Post#: 15485--------------------------------------------------
Rock Balance
By: Mac Date: January 5, 2013, 5:16 pm
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[glow=yellow,2,300]A Very, Very, Very Delicate Balance[/glow]
[center]Gravity Glue
HTML http://www.gravityglue.com/
[/center]
[center]
HTML http://www.gravityglue.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/2012-7038.jpg
HTML http://www.gravityglue.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/2012-1144.jpg
[/center]
[quote]These rocks, says the artist, are not glued, not
Velcroed. This is not a trick. Go ahead and click through our
glossary of photographs. There are big rocks pirouetting on
little ones, little ones dangling on top of big ones, pebbles
tightly clumped and suspended in air ...
[/quote]
HTML http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JykJrVbCMuM
[quote]The artist who did this, Michael Grab, is a balancer of
rocks. In an interview on Compliment Vices, he describes what
happens when he builds these sculptures in front of live
audiences, which, apparently, he's done a few times — in Costa
Rica, in Italy. Once, at the Boulder Creek Path Festival in
Boulder, Colo., a guy came up to him and said, "My brother
absolutely does not believe these are balanced like this. He
thinks there's bars or glue." He demanded proof that these
sculptures were for real.
"Everybody's watching, everybody heard the whole exchange,"
Michael says. "So I just go up and tap one in the middle and it
just collapses. And everyone is like [gasp!] So I just like, get
down, start making it again. Make it a tiny bit different."
[/quote]
[quote]But how? How does he do it? First he says, you've got to
"know the rocks." I think this is a zen thing. Or maybe a
sculptor's thing. On his website, he says he is hyperaware of
possible nooks on the rock's surface:
"The most fundamental element of balancing in a physical sense
is finding some kind of 'tripod' for the rock to stand on. Every
rock is covered in a variety of tiny to large indentations that
can act as a tripod for the rock to stand upright, or in most
orientations you can think of with other rocks. By paying close
attention to the feeling of the rocks, you will start to feel
even the smallest clicks as the notches of the rocks in contact
are moving over one another."
After that, he says he has to "find a zero point, or silence
within myself." I'm not sure what that means, but it's my sense
that the man's got great hands, hands that can feel the exact
weight of a stone and a mind that can concentrate, and somehow
get inside these stones, and, as he puts it, "Become the
balance." I think Michael, when he does this, crosses the line
between animal and mineral. For a brief time, he is what he
builds.[/quote]
HTML http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThipJ0AAJiA
#Post#: 15494--------------------------------------------------
Re: Rock Balance
By: Chiprocks1 Date: January 5, 2013, 7:20 pm
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I've gone on my fair share of road trips and invariably I come
across random rock balance-art. Not saying it's by the same
person. I highly doubt it. But yeah, it's very cool to see stuff
like this when least expected.
#Post#: 15499--------------------------------------------------
Re: Rock Balance
By: Mac Date: January 5, 2013, 8:47 pm
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It does have a Zen like quality... Doesn't it.
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