MONDAY MAY 14 2012
However, if the Dutch-designed PAL-V ONE was your mode of transport for getting to the office in the morning, it wouldn’t matter what the traffic situation was like on the roads.
Standing for ‘Personal Air and Land Vehicle’, the PAL-V ONE is a flying car or, more precisely, a car that can quickly transform into an airborne gyrocopter.
Several successful test flights have recently been conducted and now the company behind the vehicle, PAL-V, is looking for investors to help fund the first commercial production model, with first deliveries expected in 2014.
On the ground the PAL-V ONE is a slim, aerodynamic, three-wheeled vehicle combining the comfort of a car with the agility of a motorcycle thanks to its patented, cutting-edge, ‘tilting’ system. It accelerates like a sports car and can reach land speeds of up to 180 km/h (112 mph).
Powered by a robust, flight certified aircraft engine that runs on regular petrol (gasoline), the PAL-V ONE transforms into a gyrocopter within minutes as its rotor unfolds and its tail extends – rather like a Transformer robot.
As much fun as it would be to be able to escape a traffic jam by simply taking off vertically, straight out of a gridlock of cars, the PAL-V ONE does require a runway to take off and land. Even so, we’re not talking huge – a clear stretch of about 165m (540ft) will do it.
The PAL-V ONE can also reach a top speed 180 km/h (112 mph) when airborne, usually flying below 4,000 feet (1,200 m) – the airspace available for uncontrolled Visual Flight Rules (VFR) traffic – meaning no interference from commercial air traffic. And when you are not using controlled airspace, it means you don’t have to file a flight plan.
Flying a PAL-V ONE handles like a standard gyrocopter, apparently, and is quieter than a helicopter due to the main rotor rotating more slowly. Its gyroplane technology also means that it can be steered and landed safely even if the engine fails, because the rotor keeps auto-rotating.
Once back on terra firma, converting the PAL-V ONE from airplane to automobile takes about 10 minutes. The propeller folds itself automatically into the driving position. Pushing a button then lowers the rotor mast into the horizontal position. The same motion lowers the tail. The outer blades are folded over the inner blades via hinge mechanisms. And then driver/pilot has to push the tail into its driving position and secure the rotor blades.
The estimated price for a PAL-V ONE will be around $300,000, though raising the cash will be just one hurdle keeping you from hugging the clouds: Flying it requires a sports/recreational/private pilot license, and that’s before PAL-V ONE-specific flying lessons, of which 20 to 40 hours are recommended, in addition to a theoretical exam.
However, driving the PAL-V ONE on the ground requires just a regular driver’s license and takes about 30 minutes to get used to.
Apart from providing fast door-to-door mobility for private individuals – fly-driving to an island, soaring over that traffic jam, sailing above water and crossing that mountain range as freely as a bird – the PAL-V ONE could also open up a plethora of applications for professional organisations too.
It can be customised for use by police, border control, flying doctors, courier services, disaster aid organisations and the military.
For more information on the PAL-V ONE, visit http://pal-v.com/
MONDAY APRIL 09 2012
Born during a student project carried out by Jessica Lin, Julia Silverman, Jessica Matthews and Hemali Thakkar at the Ivy League university, sOccket is a football that harnesses the kinetic (motion) energy of a soccer ball during normal game play, storing it for subsequent power needs.
The name sOccket in fact has a triple meaning. It is a soccer ball; it acts as an electrical socket; and you ‘sock it one’ to generate that electrical energy.
After being played with in a casual soccer match between friends, the sOccket can become an energy-efficient power source into which small electrical appliances are plugged. Kicking and throwing the ball for just half an hour generates enough electricity to power an LED lamp for three hours, for example.
It is estimated that more than one in five people in the world have no electricity and alternatives like kerosene lamps, diesel generators and wood burning stoves are harmful to the environment such that they are estimated to cause 1.6 million deaths each year.
It is also thought that resource-poor families can spend 10 to 30 per cent of their income on kerosene, while living with the fumes from one kerosene lamp can cause the same damage as smoking two packs of cigarettes each day.
As a portable source of clean, renewable energy, the sOccket therefore has the potential to make a massive difference to the lives of many families.
And of course it’s not just its credentials as an energy source that make sOccket a potential winner: Soccer is one of the most popular sports in the world, especially in developing countries where children will often play with substitutes like ‘ju-ju’ balls made from tying plastic bags together since regular footballs – if they can get hold of them – wear out quickly because they are not designed to be played on resource-poor terrain.
However, with sOccket, these children get a high-quality, ultra-durable soccer ball that is only 140g heavier than a regular one. It is impossible to deflate and apparently has a three-year-plus lifespan meaning it can be passed down from sibling to sibling. What’s more, it’s eco-friendly being made with 95 per cent recycled material.
But how do these children end up getting their hands on a sOccket? Well, that’s where the likes of you and me come in. You buy a sOccket using the donate section of sOccket’s website, the sOccket team then coordinates with their partner organisations working in resource-poor communities and sends over the donated sOccket to be distributed to the child in need.
Donate $60 and a sOccket and a sOccket lamp will be shipped for free to a deserving family.
So far, the sOccket has made its way to Haiti, South Africa and Nigeria while in Spain platinum-selling recording artist Huecco and his charity Fundación Dame Vida! (The Give Me Life! Foundation) have brought out a Dame Vida! version of the ball endorsed by the Spanish national soccer team who are, of course, the reigning World and European champions.
In the meantime, the team are in the process of creating a sOccket basketball, due out next year.
For more information and to donate, please visit http://www.soccket.com/
SUNDAY FEBRUARY 26 2012
The sumptuous garment took over three years to create, from collecting the 1.2 million female Madagascan golden orb spiders needed to make the naturally-coloured yellow silk, to the hand-weaving and hand-embroidering of the cape itself.
Peers and Godley, a Briton and an American who have lived in Madagascar for a number of years, also created the hand-operated machine for extracting silk from the spiders, based on a design from over a century ago.
“There was a certain madness in launching into something like this,” says Peers. “In 300 years, the very few eccentric people who had tried it had fallen by the wayside because it's just too much really. The fact that it was such a huge challenge was part of the appeal.”
The spiders were collected individually in the wild, kept alive, and then harnessed and milked. Each one produced between 30 and 50 metres of thread, taking 25 minutes to extract, before being released back into nature.
“We maybe had 60 to 80 people every day looking for spiders to collect,” says Peers. “Then the whole process of extracting – ‘silking’ or milking – involved a number of people.
“And there are another group of people involved with transforming the silk, plus the weavers and embroiderers and so forth. So there were a lot of people involved in this story.”
The spiders are big enough to fill the palm of your hand, while their eyes are only able to vaguely detect changes in light, meaning they are almost blind. All varieties of Golden orb spiders, not just the Madagascan variety, produce the fantastic, yellow-coloured silk from which the cape was made.
“This is the invisibility cloak,” says Peers. “You literally cannot feel it. It’s quite extraordinary. I think one of the reasons for that is that if you get a cross-section of the silk you can see it’s perfectly cylindrical, unlike that produced by the Chinese silk worm which has got an irregular, triangular cross-section.”
But why make, specifically, a cape from this incredible material?
“The choice of the cape was because it’s a familiar garment, but at the same time it’s slightly unfamiliar because not many people actually put capes on,” says Peers.
“In early childhood you read nursery rhymes which have spiders in. There is something of that fairytale aspect to this I think. There’s also a link to the comic book super heroes, the cape and the Spiderman; a sort of amusing nod in that direction.
“But then there’s also an element of ritual about it, a sort of dalmatic or chasuble of a priestly robe of some sort. So the cape lent itself to one’s imagination in terms of rights and rituals.
“The spider also features in a lot of mythology and a lot of ancient cultures saw the spider as the creator of the cosmos, so part of the idea is the spider creating a paradise, which is the garden represented by the embroidered flowering.”
Peers adds: “This cape isn’t about fashion. This is about creating something extraordinary, magical and unique. It is a one-off and we’re privileged to have been part of something where you can say ‘no one else has done it’.”
‘Golden Spider Silk’ is on display at the V&A Museum in London until June 5th, 2012 - admission is free.
For more information, please visit: www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/g/golden-spider-silk/
SUNDAY JANUARY 29 2012
Unlike conventional cameras, the Lytro light field camera captures all of the rays of light (angle/colour/intensity) in a scene, providing new photographic capabilities hitherto impossible – including the ability to focus a picture after it has been taken!
The terrific pocket-sized camera creates three-dimensional, interactive ‘living’ images that can be refocused as many times you wish thanks to a light field sensor that records a far richer set of data than any previous photographic instrument – in terms of colour, intensity and the direction of every light ray that flows into the camera – about 11 million of them.
To process all this additional information, the camera contains a light field ‘engine’ that allows users to refocus the images directly on the camera via an intuitive glass touchscreen.
And when the Lytro’s living pictures are shared online, this light field engine travels with each picture, so anyone can interact with them on virtually any device – web browsers, mobile phones or iPads – without having to download special software
The camera also offers a pretty powerful 8x optical zoom and f/2 lens – and you don’t need a degree to work out all its functions; it features just two buttons – power and shutter – that both activate instantly. It also performs well in low-light environments, so there is no need for a flash.
Another neat feature is the minimalist, rectangular design that, thanks to its anodised aluminum case, weighs in at approximately 225g/5lbs, making it an extremely light yet sturdy companion wherever you want to exercise your picture-taking skills.
Light field science was the subject of Lytro CEO and Founder Dr Ren Ng’s PhD dissertation in computer science at Stanford University, and was once only possible with 100 cameras tethered to a supercomputer in a lab.
This year Lytro plan to apply special light field algorithms to the pictures to enable viewing on any 3D display – where viewers will be able to shift the perspective of a scene. We can’t wait!
Interview with the inventors
And is the Lytro really any good as a camera? Well I'll let you know as I've just ordered mine!
For more information on the Lytro camera, please visit www.lytro.com/camera. And for a demonstration of the ‘living’ pictures, visit the Lytro Picture Gallery at www.lytro.com/living-pictures (click anywhere inside a photo and watch that section come into focus).
SUNDAY JANUARY 22 2012
Christened Little Shining Man, the sculpture has also been complemented by an equally impressive video which shows the spectacular creation take flight at sundown above the beaches of Jersey, the biggest of the Channel Islands (between Britain and France).
Elegant yet robust, Little Shining Man was commissioned by luxury property developers Dandara and manufactured by Queen & Crawford, a Birmingham-based Design and Fabrication Workshop.
Its structure is based around the tetra kites developed by Alexander Graham Bell, multiplied out into colliding cubes, the form of which is inspired by the natural cubic formations of the mineral pyrite.
There were several challenges involved in creating Little Shining Man, which contains 23,000 individual components overall and took 16 months to develop.
The structure had to be very strong yet as lightweight as possible to enable it to fly and return to the ground again with minimal damage so it could be installed as an artwork afterwards.
State-of-art carbon fibre rods were therefore chosen in addition to a hand-made composite fabric – Cuben Fibre – normally used for yacht sails, as well as specially designed, 3-D printed nylon connectors. The ensemble allows Little Shining Man to float across the sky as if weightless.
The flying sculpture in these photos is just one section of an arrangement of three pieces, forming a final piece of art which has been suspended in the atrium of Dandara's Castle Quay development in St. Helier, Jersey.
In addition to being a permanent piece of sculpture, it will also serve as a working kite and will be annually taken down from its display to be flown in nearby St Aubin's bay.
Ivan Morison was more than satisfied after witnessing his co-creation make its maiden lift-off.
“When we first took Little Shining Man out onto the beach, you could feel the sculpture come alive,” he said. “It wanted to twist and tumble as we took it across the sands.
As the wind took hold, it rose slowly, bobbing just above our reach, until a gust caught its sails and lifted way up above us.
Standing there, watching this complex form that had taken us months to plan and build, rise high up into the sky was truly breathtaking.
We felt as Bell must have in his early experiments into flight – a time of true wonder and optimism.”
The debut flight was captured in this beautiful short film, shot at sunset to create a truly beautiful backdrop of light with some great close-ups of Little Shining Man’s geometric structure.
Complementing the superb visuals is an intriguing audio track – the sounds of waves gently lapping and slightly ominous electro music that makes Little Shining Man’s floating upwards seem science-fiction-esque.
The PAL-V ONE flying car: The ultimate in commuter transport
We recently featured the lumbering transport behemoth that is the Australian Road Train on A Parallel World, a beast you definitely wouldn’t want to find yourself behind on your daily commute.However, if the Dutch-designed PAL-V ONE was your mode of transport for getting to the office in the morning, it wouldn’t matter what the traffic situation was like on the roads.
Standing for ‘Personal Air and Land Vehicle’, the PAL-V ONE is a flying car or, more precisely, a car that can quickly transform into an airborne gyrocopter.
Several successful test flights have recently been conducted and now the company behind the vehicle, PAL-V, is looking for investors to help fund the first commercial production model, with first deliveries expected in 2014.
On the ground the PAL-V ONE is a slim, aerodynamic, three-wheeled vehicle combining the comfort of a car with the agility of a motorcycle thanks to its patented, cutting-edge, ‘tilting’ system. It accelerates like a sports car and can reach land speeds of up to 180 km/h (112 mph).
Powered by a robust, flight certified aircraft engine that runs on regular petrol (gasoline), the PAL-V ONE transforms into a gyrocopter within minutes as its rotor unfolds and its tail extends – rather like a Transformer robot.
As much fun as it would be to be able to escape a traffic jam by simply taking off vertically, straight out of a gridlock of cars, the PAL-V ONE does require a runway to take off and land. Even so, we’re not talking huge – a clear stretch of about 165m (540ft) will do it.
The PAL-V ONE can also reach a top speed 180 km/h (112 mph) when airborne, usually flying below 4,000 feet (1,200 m) – the airspace available for uncontrolled Visual Flight Rules (VFR) traffic – meaning no interference from commercial air traffic. And when you are not using controlled airspace, it means you don’t have to file a flight plan.
Flying a PAL-V ONE handles like a standard gyrocopter, apparently, and is quieter than a helicopter due to the main rotor rotating more slowly. Its gyroplane technology also means that it can be steered and landed safely even if the engine fails, because the rotor keeps auto-rotating.
Once back on terra firma, converting the PAL-V ONE from airplane to automobile takes about 10 minutes. The propeller folds itself automatically into the driving position. Pushing a button then lowers the rotor mast into the horizontal position. The same motion lowers the tail. The outer blades are folded over the inner blades via hinge mechanisms. And then driver/pilot has to push the tail into its driving position and secure the rotor blades.
The estimated price for a PAL-V ONE will be around $300,000, though raising the cash will be just one hurdle keeping you from hugging the clouds: Flying it requires a sports/recreational/private pilot license, and that’s before PAL-V ONE-specific flying lessons, of which 20 to 40 hours are recommended, in addition to a theoretical exam.
However, driving the PAL-V ONE on the ground requires just a regular driver’s license and takes about 30 minutes to get used to.
Apart from providing fast door-to-door mobility for private individuals – fly-driving to an island, soaring over that traffic jam, sailing above water and crossing that mountain range as freely as a bird – the PAL-V ONE could also open up a plethora of applications for professional organisations too.
It can be customised for use by police, border control, flying doctors, courier services, disaster aid organisations and the military.
For more information on the PAL-V ONE, visit http://pal-v.com/
MONDAY APRIL 09 2012
Play soccer and create free and clean electricity with sOccket
Four Harvard students have a come up with a brilliant way of providing kids in developing countries with the equipment needed to play their favourite sport while generating safe, clean and renewable electricity at the same time.Born during a student project carried out by Jessica Lin, Julia Silverman, Jessica Matthews and Hemali Thakkar at the Ivy League university, sOccket is a football that harnesses the kinetic (motion) energy of a soccer ball during normal game play, storing it for subsequent power needs.
The name sOccket in fact has a triple meaning. It is a soccer ball; it acts as an electrical socket; and you ‘sock it one’ to generate that electrical energy.
After being played with in a casual soccer match between friends, the sOccket can become an energy-efficient power source into which small electrical appliances are plugged. Kicking and throwing the ball for just half an hour generates enough electricity to power an LED lamp for three hours, for example.
It is estimated that more than one in five people in the world have no electricity and alternatives like kerosene lamps, diesel generators and wood burning stoves are harmful to the environment such that they are estimated to cause 1.6 million deaths each year.
It is also thought that resource-poor families can spend 10 to 30 per cent of their income on kerosene, while living with the fumes from one kerosene lamp can cause the same damage as smoking two packs of cigarettes each day.
As a portable source of clean, renewable energy, the sOccket therefore has the potential to make a massive difference to the lives of many families.
And of course it’s not just its credentials as an energy source that make sOccket a potential winner: Soccer is one of the most popular sports in the world, especially in developing countries where children will often play with substitutes like ‘ju-ju’ balls made from tying plastic bags together since regular footballs – if they can get hold of them – wear out quickly because they are not designed to be played on resource-poor terrain.
However, with sOccket, these children get a high-quality, ultra-durable soccer ball that is only 140g heavier than a regular one. It is impossible to deflate and apparently has a three-year-plus lifespan meaning it can be passed down from sibling to sibling. What’s more, it’s eco-friendly being made with 95 per cent recycled material.
But how do these children end up getting their hands on a sOccket? Well, that’s where the likes of you and me come in. You buy a sOccket using the donate section of sOccket’s website, the sOccket team then coordinates with their partner organisations working in resource-poor communities and sends over the donated sOccket to be distributed to the child in need.
Donate $60 and a sOccket and a sOccket lamp will be shipped for free to a deserving family.
So far, the sOccket has made its way to Haiti, South Africa and Nigeria while in Spain platinum-selling recording artist Huecco and his charity Fundación Dame Vida! (The Give Me Life! Foundation) have brought out a Dame Vida! version of the ball endorsed by the Spanish national soccer team who are, of course, the reigning World and European champions.
In the meantime, the team are in the process of creating a sOccket basketball, due out next year.
For more information and to donate, please visit http://www.soccket.com/
SUNDAY FEBRUARY 26 2012
Sensational Golden Cape made from Spider Silk
Since the end of January, visitors to the Victoria & Albert Museum in London have been able to marvel at Simon Peers and Nicholas Godley’s wonderful exhibition: A superb, golden spider-silk cape.The sumptuous garment took over three years to create, from collecting the 1.2 million female Madagascan golden orb spiders needed to make the naturally-coloured yellow silk, to the hand-weaving and hand-embroidering of the cape itself.
Peers and Godley, a Briton and an American who have lived in Madagascar for a number of years, also created the hand-operated machine for extracting silk from the spiders, based on a design from over a century ago.
“There was a certain madness in launching into something like this,” says Peers. “In 300 years, the very few eccentric people who had tried it had fallen by the wayside because it's just too much really. The fact that it was such a huge challenge was part of the appeal.”
The spiders were collected individually in the wild, kept alive, and then harnessed and milked. Each one produced between 30 and 50 metres of thread, taking 25 minutes to extract, before being released back into nature.
“We maybe had 60 to 80 people every day looking for spiders to collect,” says Peers. “Then the whole process of extracting – ‘silking’ or milking – involved a number of people.
“And there are another group of people involved with transforming the silk, plus the weavers and embroiderers and so forth. So there were a lot of people involved in this story.”
The spiders are big enough to fill the palm of your hand, while their eyes are only able to vaguely detect changes in light, meaning they are almost blind. All varieties of Golden orb spiders, not just the Madagascan variety, produce the fantastic, yellow-coloured silk from which the cape was made.
“This is the invisibility cloak,” says Peers. “You literally cannot feel it. It’s quite extraordinary. I think one of the reasons for that is that if you get a cross-section of the silk you can see it’s perfectly cylindrical, unlike that produced by the Chinese silk worm which has got an irregular, triangular cross-section.”
But why make, specifically, a cape from this incredible material?
“The choice of the cape was because it’s a familiar garment, but at the same time it’s slightly unfamiliar because not many people actually put capes on,” says Peers.
“In early childhood you read nursery rhymes which have spiders in. There is something of that fairytale aspect to this I think. There’s also a link to the comic book super heroes, the cape and the Spiderman; a sort of amusing nod in that direction.
“But then there’s also an element of ritual about it, a sort of dalmatic or chasuble of a priestly robe of some sort. So the cape lent itself to one’s imagination in terms of rights and rituals.
“The spider also features in a lot of mythology and a lot of ancient cultures saw the spider as the creator of the cosmos, so part of the idea is the spider creating a paradise, which is the garden represented by the embroidered flowering.”
Peers adds: “This cape isn’t about fashion. This is about creating something extraordinary, magical and unique. It is a one-off and we’re privileged to have been part of something where you can say ‘no one else has done it’.”
‘Golden Spider Silk’ is on display at the V&A Museum in London until June 5th, 2012 - admission is free.
For more information, please visit: www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/g/golden-spider-silk/
SUNDAY JANUARY 29 2012
Incredible Lytro camera doesn't just shoot light, it shoots 'light fields'.
Californian company Lytro have revolutionised the world of photography with their amazing light field camera.Unlike conventional cameras, the Lytro light field camera captures all of the rays of light (angle/colour/intensity) in a scene, providing new photographic capabilities hitherto impossible – including the ability to focus a picture after it has been taken!
The terrific pocket-sized camera creates three-dimensional, interactive ‘living’ images that can be refocused as many times you wish thanks to a light field sensor that records a far richer set of data than any previous photographic instrument – in terms of colour, intensity and the direction of every light ray that flows into the camera – about 11 million of them.
To process all this additional information, the camera contains a light field ‘engine’ that allows users to refocus the images directly on the camera via an intuitive glass touchscreen.
And when the Lytro’s living pictures are shared online, this light field engine travels with each picture, so anyone can interact with them on virtually any device – web browsers, mobile phones or iPads – without having to download special software
The camera also offers a pretty powerful 8x optical zoom and f/2 lens – and you don’t need a degree to work out all its functions; it features just two buttons – power and shutter – that both activate instantly. It also performs well in low-light environments, so there is no need for a flash.
Another neat feature is the minimalist, rectangular design that, thanks to its anodised aluminum case, weighs in at approximately 225g/5lbs, making it an extremely light yet sturdy companion wherever you want to exercise your picture-taking skills.
Light field science was the subject of Lytro CEO and Founder Dr Ren Ng’s PhD dissertation in computer science at Stanford University, and was once only possible with 100 cameras tethered to a supercomputer in a lab.
This year Lytro plan to apply special light field algorithms to the pictures to enable viewing on any 3D display – where viewers will be able to shift the perspective of a scene. We can’t wait!
Interview with the inventors
And is the Lytro really any good as a camera? Well I'll let you know as I've just ordered mine!
For more information on the Lytro camera, please visit www.lytro.com/camera. And for a demonstration of the ‘living’ pictures, visit the Lytro Picture Gallery at www.lytro.com/living-pictures (click anywhere inside a photo and watch that section come into focus).
SUNDAY JANUARY 22 2012
Little Shining Man: A stunning kite as scuptural art
Artists Heather and Ivan Morison have collaborated with architectural designer Sash Reading to create an amazing sculptural work that can fly like a kite.Christened Little Shining Man, the sculpture has also been complemented by an equally impressive video which shows the spectacular creation take flight at sundown above the beaches of Jersey, the biggest of the Channel Islands (between Britain and France).
Elegant yet robust, Little Shining Man was commissioned by luxury property developers Dandara and manufactured by Queen & Crawford, a Birmingham-based Design and Fabrication Workshop.
Its structure is based around the tetra kites developed by Alexander Graham Bell, multiplied out into colliding cubes, the form of which is inspired by the natural cubic formations of the mineral pyrite.
There were several challenges involved in creating Little Shining Man, which contains 23,000 individual components overall and took 16 months to develop.
The structure had to be very strong yet as lightweight as possible to enable it to fly and return to the ground again with minimal damage so it could be installed as an artwork afterwards.
State-of-art carbon fibre rods were therefore chosen in addition to a hand-made composite fabric – Cuben Fibre – normally used for yacht sails, as well as specially designed, 3-D printed nylon connectors. The ensemble allows Little Shining Man to float across the sky as if weightless.
The flying sculpture in these photos is just one section of an arrangement of three pieces, forming a final piece of art which has been suspended in the atrium of Dandara's Castle Quay development in St. Helier, Jersey.
In addition to being a permanent piece of sculpture, it will also serve as a working kite and will be annually taken down from its display to be flown in nearby St Aubin's bay.
Ivan Morison was more than satisfied after witnessing his co-creation make its maiden lift-off.
“When we first took Little Shining Man out onto the beach, you could feel the sculpture come alive,” he said. “It wanted to twist and tumble as we took it across the sands.
As the wind took hold, it rose slowly, bobbing just above our reach, until a gust caught its sails and lifted way up above us.
Standing there, watching this complex form that had taken us months to plan and build, rise high up into the sky was truly breathtaking.
We felt as Bell must have in his early experiments into flight – a time of true wonder and optimism.”
The debut flight was captured in this beautiful short film, shot at sunset to create a truly beautiful backdrop of light with some great close-ups of Little Shining Man’s geometric structure.
Complementing the superb visuals is an intriguing audio track – the sounds of waves gently lapping and slightly ominous electro music that makes Little Shining Man’s floating upwards seem science-fiction-esque.
