Gallery: Watch a Pyramid of Mirrors Morph Based on Desert Weather

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    Gugo Torelli and Shirin Abedinirad
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    Babel Tower - Installation - Shirin Abedinirad - GugoTorelli #6

    Babel Tower is the work of Gugo Torelli, a designer from Florence, Italy, and Shirin Abedinirad, an artist from Iran.
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    Gugo Torelli and Shirin Abedinirad
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    Babel Tower - Installation - Shirin Abedinirad - GugoTorelli #9

    The ziggurat-shaped stack of mirrored boxes sat in the Dasht-e Kavir desert, in central Iran, for a few days last October.
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    Gugo Torelli and Shirin Abedinirad
    03

    Babel Tower - Installation - Shirin Abedinirad - GugoTorelli #0

    Sensors, gears, and an Arduino were hidden inside the sculpture.
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    Gugo Torelli and Shirin Abedinirad
    04

    Babel Tower - Installation - Shirin Abedinirad - GugoTorelli #5

    As the sensors detected changes in the temperature and the light, the tower’s nine tiers would independently spin around.
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    Gugo Torelli and Shirin Abedinirad
    05

    Babel Tower - Installation - Shirin Abedinirad - GugoTorelli #1

    This being the desert, a climate of extremes, the sculpture did a lot of spinning.
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    Gugo Torelli and Shirin Abedinirad
    06

    Babel Tower - Installation - Shirin Abedinirad - GugoTorelli #3

    The earthy hues and gradients of the Iranian desert, when reflected in multitudes, create an interesting effect. It’s like you can see the entire landscape at once.
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    Gugo Torelli and Shirin Abedinirad
    07

    Babel Tower - Installation - Shirin Abedinirad - GugoTorelli #4

    At other times, looking at Babel Tower is like gazing into a kaleidoscope of the desert landscape.
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    Gugo Torelli and Shirin Abedinirad
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    Babel Tower - Installation - Shirin Abedinirad - GugoTorelli #7

    “We wanted to give a message of unity,” Torelli says.
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    Gugo Torelli and Shirin Abedinirad
    09

    Babel Tower - Installation - Shirin Abedinirad - GugoTorelli #8

    That's where the name of the installation comes from: it's named for the Tower of Babel, from Genesis 11.
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    Gugo Torelli and Shirin Abedinirad
    10

    Babel Tower - Installation - Shirin Abedinirad - GugoTorelli #10

    Babel Tower—Torelli and Abedinirad’s version—is still working and intact, but its creators had to remove the installation from the Iranian desert shortly after erecting it. “We are kind of independent artists,” Torelli says. In other words: “We didn’t have any authorization to install it there.”
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