Jeff Lieberman Builds Seemingly Impossible Open Source Sculptures

On our never-ending quest to bring you new and interesting projects, we stumbled on Jeff Lieberman and his Moore Pattern. Liebermann is one of those guys who is positioned right on the edge between art and technology—he has a show on Discovery Channel, makes music with his band Gloobic and music videos for OK GO.

The Moore Pattern is a kinetic sculpture, a moving piece of art, which he designed as a wedding gift for some friends in 2007. The sculpture consists of two big discs rotating in opposite directions, that way, for the viewer, it seems like it is just one big disc twisting and turning in an impossible way.

The entire project is open source—everything from his expenses to 3D drawings and building plans are available on his website. So if you really want to, you can just build one of your own, put it up on your apartment wall and confound your friends. If you are like us though and have two left hands, or a screw-phobia, you can always just go to his Kickstarter page and pledge for his project to pre-order a Moore Pattern sculpture built by Lieberman himself.

Lieberman’s project, especially the open-source-do-whatever-you-want-with-it bit, is definitely one that’s emblematic of the web’s dedication to “open culture” and DIY communities. Creative code repositories like OpenFrameworks and Processing provide forums where artists and developers can build and exchange code, and websites like Thingiverse are databases for free and open hardware where anybody can upload their designs and share them with the world. This open exchange of knowledge and information heightens the pace of innovation, as artists are able to build upon the work of their peers and work as a community.

You should definitely have a look at the video below, the sculpture only really comes to life when in motion. Also, Jeff has just about the coolest, deepest, silkiest voice ever.