These building blocks let you create shape-shifting sculptures
- Ghostkubes are shape-shifting structures made up of individual cubes.
- They're made by Erik Åberg, a longtime juggler and performer.
- The cubes are connected using hinges and can be manipulated in a variety of ways.
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The following is a transcript for the video:
Narrator: These cubes? They're no ordinary building blocks. They're built to collapse, expand, and change shapes infinitely. And they're called Ghostkubes.
This is Erik Åberg, the inventor behind them. His invention was inspired by the art of paper folding, also known as origami. But there's something else that inspired Erik... juggling.
As a professional juggler and performer, he wanted to add something special to his usual routines. And he found that origami was the perfect place to start. With its intricate folding patterns, origami has tons of potential for movement. So he set out to build his own system that would fold and unfold endlessly, just like in origami.
His prototypes called for building materials a little sturdier than paper. Luckily, he had the perfect thing on hand. Casino dice. He connected all those tiny identical blocks together using adhesive tape. And once he had a structure that moved, he was able to start re-creating that same system with wood.
Erik Åberg: I hadn't predicted the way it could move in advance. That was something that was generated by the process.
Narrator: And that mysterious, unpredictable movement sparked the name Ghostkubes. All of his original designs were built with the idea of performance in mind. That's why each cube had a hole in the center. That way a juggling ball could move from one place to another and back again. When he realized those holes made the blocks lighter and easier to hold on to, he built the rest of them the same way. The only difference now is he makes them with plastic instead of wood. This way they easily snap together or apart, which means the number of cubes you can add is limitless.
Lately, you can find Erik traveling around the world, performing with Ghostkubes. And he's been crowdfunding his systems so he can one day produce them on a much larger scale. He wants them to be a tool for creativity and inspiration for everyone.
Erik Åberg: My guess is that the number of variations that you can create with this method is infinite. If I find one variation that has two layers, I can just keep adding layers, three, four, five, and so forth. And there's not really a ceiling to that.
Narrator: What would you build with these blocks?