Watch a Pyramid of Mirrors Morph Based on Desert Weather

Courtesy Italian designer Gugo Torelli and Iranian artist Shirin Abedinirad

by Margaret Rhodes, Wired

FOR A FEW days in October, a ziggurat of mirrored boxes stood in Dasht-e Kavir, a desert in central Iran. The sculpture contained sensors, gears, and an Arduino processor that sensed changes in the temperature and the light, which caused the tower’s nine tiers to spin independently. This being the desert, a place of extremes, the sculpture did a lot of spinning. From any angle, at any time, looking at it was like gazing into a kaleidoscope of the surrounding landscape.

The sculpture was called Babel Tower, and it was the work of Italian designer Gugo Torelli, who programmed the electronics, and Iranian artist Shirin Abedinirad, who handled the mirrors. Before collaborating with Torelli on Babel Tower, Abedinirad installed a similar ziggurat in Sydney for the Underbelly Arts Festival. That project looked more like an optical illusion—as though a shard of blue sky had fallen into the grass. The earthy hues and gradients of the Iranian desert, when reflected in multitudes, create an entirely different effect. It’s like you can see the entire landscape at once.

“We wanted to give a message of unity,” Torelli says. The Tower of Babel, if you need a refresher, appears in Genesis 11. The Biblical story describes an incredible collaboration: The people of the earth all spoke the same language, and decided to join forces and build a brick-and-tar tower where they could come together. As the story goes, the Lord sought to temper the power of the people to maintain control, so he made them all speak different languages. Although the people scattered to the far corners of the world and no longer shared a language, Tower of Babel even now is a symbol for a unified society.

Babel Tower—the mirrored one—still works, but its creators had to remove the installation shortly after installing it. “We are kind of independent artists,” Torelli says. In other words: “We didn’t have any authorization to install it there.” For now, the three-foot tower is stashed in Abedinirad’s room. They don’t have a plan for where to go next, but Torelli is experimenting with proximity sensors that would make the tower rotate in reaction to the people around it. That idea becomes especially interesting when Abedinirad throws out an idea for Babel Tower’s next destination: New York City.

Babel Tower is the work of Gugo Torelli, a designer from Florence, Italy, and Shirin Abedinirad, an artist from Iran. Courtesy Gugo Torelli, Shirin Abedinirad, and Wired.

Sensors, gears, and an Arduino were hidden inside the sculpture. Courtesy Gugo Torelli, Shirin Abedinirad, and Wired.

This being the desert, a climate of extremes, the sculpture did a lot of spinning. Courtesy Gugo Torelli, Shirin Abedinirad, and Wired.

The earthy hues and gradients of the Iranian desert, when reflected in multitudes, create an interesting effect. It’s like you can see the entire landscape at once. Courtesy Gugo Torelli, Shirin Abedinirad, and Wired.

At other times, looking at Babel Tower is like gazing into a kaleidoscope of the desert landscape. Courtesy Gugo Torelli, Shirin Abedinirad, and Wired.

As the sensors detected changes in the temperature and the light, the tower’s nine tiers would independently spin around. Courtesy Gugo Torelli, Shirin Abedinirad, and Wired.

“We wanted to give a message of unity,” Torelli says. Courtesy Gugo Torelli, Shirin Abedinirad, and Wired.

That's where the name of the installation comes from: it's named for the Tower of Babel, from Genesis 11. Courtesy Gugo Torelli, Shirin Abedinirad, and Wired.

The ziggurat-shaped stack of mirrored boxes sat in the Dasht-e Kavir desert, in central Iran, for a few days last October. Courtesy Gugo Torelli, Shirin Abedinirad, and Wired.

Babel Tower—Torelli and Abedinirad’s version—is still working and intact, but its creators had to remove the installation from the Iranian desert shortly after erecting it. “We are kind of independent artists,” Torelli says. In other words: “We didn’t have any authorization to install it there.”  Courtesy Gugo Torelli, Shirin Abedinirad, and Wired.

Via Wired