Under The Right Lighting, Albert Einstein Looks Like Marilyn Monroe

December 23, 2011

We all know nightclub lighting can play tricks on the eye, harsh fluorescent lighting may reveal a different face, but did you ever think you could mistake Albert Einstein for Marilyn Monroe?

Drzach & Suchy, (previously mentioned on the Shapeways blog) have been working on a series of 3D printed shadow casting panels that allows multiple images to be encoded within a single physical object, a white panel, which displays the separate images under specific lighting conditions.

“The underlying principle of our technique is based on a simple observation: the shadow cast by an object depends not only on the object itself, but also on the light; therefore the same object under changing lighting conditions can totally change its appearance.”

With Conversation, the technique is used to make an image of Albert Einstein transform into an image of Marilyn Monroe. See the video below for a vaguely unsatisfying demonstration.

Conversations is part of Schattenbilder, a project in cooperation with Swiss Science Center\ Technorama also includes Time and Tik-Tak. Their site has a great making of page as well, showing just how labor intensive some of the process were.