London company Stufish enveloped visitors at this year’s One Giant Leap technology conference in Saudi Arabia in an enormous walkthrough kaleidoscope tunnel, surrounded by LED visuals. Stufish is one of the companies behind the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony and specializes in jaw-dropping illusions.
The 131-ft tunnel at the Riyadh Front Expo Centre measured 19.7 ft tall and 9.8 ft, although its seamless, warpless mirrors make the space look cylindrical. Huge LED panels under the floor and in the Mediapro wall tiles push out a series of slowly expanding, wildly psychedelic geometric designs, interspersed with visuals from a range of different environments “from the bottom of the sea to the sky and stars.”
As reported in New Atlas, Its size doesn’t win it the “world’s largest kaleidoscope” title outright – a converted silo in New York State has a larger diameter, and another exhibition piece built for the 2005 Aichi Expo in Japan featured a tube 47 m (154 ft) long. Those two projects were vertically oriented. The Stufish design is the biggest kaleidoscope ever built for people to actually walk through.
Stufish says the main challenge was to achieve a 40m long seamless and warp-less mirror, which was achieved by using a showtex mirror foil product. Additionally, another challenge was to create an entry exit design that did not disrupt the seamless content reflected within the Kaleidoscope. This was achieved by the two triangular entry and exit portals at either end.
GALLERY (Images Copywright Stufish)
