(Video link HERE.) Japanese artist Toshihiko Shibuya has placed ‘water pallet’ floating on a square pool of water at the Sapporo Sculpture Garden, Painted with pinks, blues and greens on the underside of their base, the white circles glide on the surface of the basin, reflecting a colorful hue when they overlap.

What a lovely idea. Of course, we tried to figure out how we could do that (assuming we had a pool to begin with).

Toshihiko Shibuya
Toshihiko Shibuya
Looking closely, and at Shibuya’s other work, it appears that some of the pallets are secured with rods that anchor them to the bottom of the pool; they are roughly the shape of large carpet tacks. That way, they can appear in levels, and free floating disks can circle around at will.
That being said, we wondered what materials might work to at least float some “polka dots/disk lilies” in a pool of water. So we googled:
thin disks floating in water
thin plastic floating in water
flat plastic water lilies
floating water lily sculpture
(does rubber float?)
things that float in water…

 

We inadvertently made a poem. We also came upon another artist who had water lilies in mind for a sculpture:  Bruce Munro’s made “water lilies” from repurposed CDs.

Bruce Munro
Bruce Munro

They don’t have the quiet serenity of Shibuya’s water lilies, but fueled our imaginings further. What else could we float? Paper boats perhaps…

Emma Luckadoo/Flickr
Emma Luckadoo/Flickr

They inspired Claire Morgan’s artwork made of hundreds of them: 

Claire Morgan "Water on the Brain"
Claire Morgan “Water on the Brain”

They are easy enought to make from a single sheet of paper…click here to see how.

 

via Design Boom

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