The annual Pop!Tech conference gathers a collection of innovators and thinkers to ponder ways to improve the human condition, but there are also many artists who come to show their "outside-the-box" creation.
In his presentation, kinetic artist Reuben Margolin literally broke apart a box to help illustrate how he uses his love of nature and high school math to create kinetic or moving art.
One such piece looks like a suspended golden spider web.
"It's called 'The Beaded Spiral Wave,' and it's made up of 241 strings and the strings go down and connect to about 12,000 beads that are faceted and kind of sparkly," Margolin said. "And it moves around, a little bit inspired by the way an eddy comes off a paddle when paddling a boat in the water."
From Mother Nature's influence on artwork to the area that surrounds the event, it's no wonder getting us all greener is a hot topic at Pop!Tech.
 |  |
 | |  |
| | | | | | | |
Pop!Tech
NY1’s Adam Balkin has more on this year’s Pop!Tech Conference.
 
| | |
| | | | | |
|
One local garage was transformed into a Pop!Tech Creative Reuse Workshop, for turning old high-tech trash into new things like solar-powered robots.
"You can get old solar calculators and pull those out and basically sodder them all together and get that working," Fade to Future’s Zach Debord said. "Other than that, recycled walkmans, broken VCRs, broken CD players, all of those things have motors, capacitors, transistors --pull them out, put them together in the right way and you can build all kinds of interesting little robots
out of that."
To make recycling more exciting than merely organizing your papers and plastics by the curbside, one participant makes lasers out of lunchboxes.
"We buy used lunchboxes on eBay, basically. You could take a $5 laser, the kind of thing you'd use to torment your cat or dog, and build that into something with a slow motor and a little plastic disc that you get at the top of your pancake of recordable CDs," says Mike Gould of Illuminatus Light Show.
"A little glue, a little imagination, the laser is broken up in an interesting and creative way that is sort of soothing we could sit and stare at these things for hours."
Affix those lasers on top of speakers so the light shows bounce to music, and hours could quickly turn into days.
