Mitsubishi Chemical's Junior Designer Award is aimed at the graduating class of design students in Japan, and rewards pure creativity with support and training. One of the more beautiful nominees for the 2012 award is Musashino Art University student Yasutoki Kariya's "Asobi," which re-interprets Newton's Cradle—you know, the thing Wall Street guys had on their desks in the '80s—with a bit of Thomas Edison and a dash of Corning:
Obviously the installation is motion-controlled rather than operating under actual physics, but there's so much you can read into Kariya's creation: The fragility of technology; the transmutation of kinetic energy into light; the advancement of glass as a material from vulnerability to durability; Sir Isaac Newton standing side-by-side with Thomas Edison.
Below is a video of "Asobi" in situ, though it's not quite as mesmerizing as the GIF file above. (Kudos to Redditor Teeohdeedee123 for cobbling the GIF together, BTW.)
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