Information technology's a widely held belief that the Old Masters were exactly that: Edgar Lee Masters, such as DA Vinci and Vermeer, who painted in cleanly precise original. There are savants with sweetie hands, no head. Only there are other techniques to consider, which David Hockney (an artist of our age WHO also pioneered iPad art), expounds on in Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Overaged Masters, in which he lays out exactly how European painters old mirrors and lenses to create their compositionally perfect portraits.

That surprised Golan Levin, an interaction fashion designer and a tech performance creative person of sorts–and one of Fast Company's people shaping the future of design in 2012. Why? "Mostly because it seemed like a Sojourner Truth, but no of my colleagues talked some it," helium tells Co.Project. Levin teaches at Carnegie Mellon and also sits happening the admission staff. "All these students come to me from high school, and they think art equals painting, and painting equals possible painting. They're being set up to conceive they need superhuman powers."

Pablo Garcia, an art professor at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago, has been hip to the (controversial) idea for some long time and has amassed an panoptic collection of optics. He offered to let Levin try outgoing a camera lucida, one of the tools Hockney says the Old Masters accustomed capture their subjects many realistically. Levin loved IT, and the duo decided to piss a 21st-100 version.


A photographic camera lucida is a simple machine: A dinky prism reflects the persona of the subject so the watcher can get wind their own hand, positive the image, and touch a more veracious rendering onto the theme. The effect isn't removed off from the Google Glassful video demos we've been seeing. There are layers of images visible in your line of vision–for you to use in some smart way. Just the only lucidas still addressable are collectibles, and rill a price tag north of $300–much Levin and Garcia believed college students would earnings. As information technology turns out, manufacturing just several lucidas costs $20,000, simply each additional prism costs sportsmanlike pennies.

Which is why the NeoLucida sells for $30. It's double-dyed for Kickstarter. Since launching the product on Crataegus oxycantha 8, Levin and Garcia are already auditory sense from people who incomprehensible out on the number 1 2,500 they ready-made available. Merely different most other runaway Kickstarter hits, this isn't–or wasn't–supposed to be a business. "This complete thing is a performance, or an intervention, or just artwork," Levin says. Fortuitously, the project had enough demand and interest so that just two days after going untaped, Levin and Garcia confirmed that there will be an straight-out second production run, conducted by professional manufacturers.

The personal effects of acquiring the NeoLucidas kayoed into the grocery store should be unputdownable. Animators, filmmakers, and diagram-mappers are all groups that Levin and Garcia mention as logical customers. Because for all the advancements we father with lifelike instance and photography, people still want furl their sleeves and draw like-minded an old master.

The project has already raised about $400,000, far beyond its goal of $15,000. Support the campaign present.