This Object Looks Impossible!

Oh Wonder, a feeling of surprise mingled, with admiration caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar or inexplicable. Tom lawton is an artist out of the uk, he’s known for his mesmerizing and calming art pieces. Much like this one. He created the title Uplift, which uses solar energy to power. The sustainably built spiral giving the onlooker a feeling of bliss and serenity Tom has been working on something unusually different for the past few years.

Well, you know uplift, you know i’ve been making these these spiral sculptures for a long time and i maybe have made 2 500 spiral sculptures and when the spirals turn they go in either one direction they’re either going up or they’re going down start getting philosophical about What is the nature of a spiral – and i was thinking about it – really entwined with like the dynamic of life, and i don’t know why. I just think i just just spent so much time doing it and i was, i was just playing with these spirals building them and then was like imagine. If you could build one that went in both directions, the first ones were drawings, but they literally looked like. I was crazy, um, I’m just right. My kids would like it.

I have sketchbooks, I’ve got drawings after drawings of these spiral things. I look like I’m in a madhouse. What started with a scribble and a loose idea quickly transformed into a quest one that would require science, art, mathematics, physics and nature to accomplish and to create the form I had to learn the math to create the geometry. So it’s perfect, you have to model it on the computer and you have to use parametric modeling software right. So you have to put your constraints on free free-form.

You know I’ve got this. I’ve got this um this little helix that goes up and I’ve got this little helix that goes down and they have to bridge each other and join in a way. That’S really pure, so i was doing it in physically and wire and sketching it, and i i could see it clearly in my mind, but i i didn’t have the skills to get it right, physically um, so we went into the computer software and that was what Allowed us to bring it together like perfectly what was strange was i knew how it looked from above and below and before i had made it and when i saw that in the computer i was just it’s done, it’s done, that’s it! That’s all. It needs to be, and it’s the same from above as below, which is interesting.

The underworld mirrors the heavens or something – and this is the wonder – is the dance in the middle. I don’t know if an aptly named wonder is impossible. Looking structure is a physical object whose properties seem to transcend our physical reality. It’s almost like you’re staring at an nft or a 3d render. The combination of materials movement and shape gives the onlooker a uniquely magical experience when observed, and that’s taken. Maybe two years now to get to the point where we’re making it in copper, the technique is very aerospace, so it’s a blend of hand, finished work and also advanced kind of laser, accurate fabrication.

Although only two of these larger wonder pieces exist, one of which is being displayed in an abbey in the uk and the other here with me, i felt the need to share wonder rather than keep it to myself, so i decided to reach out to a local Art gallery nearby and inquire if they’d like to have it on display there. It is so this will make perfect sense. Yeah yeah, because I mean it’s moving yeah, it’s like dancing yeah. Now here’s the interesting part of wonder the gallery just so happened to be featuring. An exhibit on movement, how serendipitous, I thought, but Tom wasn’t surprised that it’s currently on display right now, which is very exciting.

We have it set up at a local art gallery and running now through august, is the exhibit on sort of movement and dance show show, and it’s just such a perfect fit. It’s so timely. When I approached him and I was like hey, you know, I would love to use your art gallery and have people come in and see this thing and see what they think and what he’s like. Oh yeah, we’re doing an exhibit on movement and dance. So he’s showing me all these paintings uh that are circular and there’s this movement and everything in it.

I just thought it was so perfect. Yeah yeah yeah, like it, worked out that way it’s kind of wild. It is wild. I find this with everything to do with wondering if it kind of creates its own way. It’s like making a bat symbol right.

I’Ve made this object and I’ve kind of just gone all right. I’m just going to share it and I’ll put it on my instagram and my reach is really small. Maybe a collective of 10 000 people across everything, so really small, but the people who’ve come back are like they’re, the most extraordinarily interesting group of people. I’ve got cosmologists, quantum physicists, um, druids, um, a lot of musicians, magicians, movement, people, meditators, neuroscientists, and it kind of goes on. It’s like these baton boys. This very funny club, but wonder, has a has a bit of a power of its own and i think, there’s something so so unique about nobody’s seen it before and so that when you put it in person, it’s lovely that you’re going to do this thing with Movement – i don’t i’m on my most recent reel on my instagram, i put it on brighton beach and, and we have people who were there with it, and the girls were just moving like one day, and i was just like this is this is great, and this Is what’s been amazing is how the shape and the form have resonated with these, these extraordinarily brained people.

So there’s a lady i’ve met called dr jude caravan she’s, a quantum physicist she’s, a cosmologist unity, unified reality diversifies itself in the most incredible ways in the physical realm from the most simple of instructions, and she said the shape has moved and it’s almost like. The feedback you’re almost like the consciousness of the universe, showing us the shape of how we were at the genesis of it all. It’s beyond me, and it’s kind of like, um, very special. I mean I almost get goosebumps because I talk about it. I can’t describe some of the wonderful things and the way that people have spoken about it. She sees the signature first breath she.

She says it wasn’t the big bang. It was the big breath right. So it was this life came this big breath of energy and um and um, and she said it was the shape of wonder that, isn’t the only instance of an unusual connection brought on by wonder kurt godel, who is one of einstein’s best friends in his later Years found a solution to the general theory of relativity that modeled a strange unusual rotating universe allowing for backward and forward time travel. The depiction of his model matches Tom’s work perfectly. This guy massimo on um rainmaker on twitter. He shared this.

This image of um well, he can read the equations which i can’t do and and and he abstracted the equations into a shape and the shape had well. This guy massimo just shared it and was like, and i was just looking at it going – i’m not bearing when i create wonder i’ve got no reference points, so there’s nothing they’re. Just me building spirals and me wondering hey. I wonder if they could go both ways and is that an interesting dynamic and and can i make something harmony so that to me it’s all original thought, but maybe it’s not original, maybe there’s something that’s bigger than us that interconnects us, maybe there’s um and maybe There’S an invisible aerial somewhere. That’s that!

That’s it! That’s taking that. I just don’t know but um, but I felt it through. A lot of my creative life is that you do things and then there are synchronicities, but when I saw the interpretations of Einstein’s equations and then made us this shape and literally when that’s my shape as a magician. It is my job to try and create the experience of wonder through magic to create a unique and unexplainable experience for my audience to bend their objective view of reality for a moment and connect with them in a fictional realm that I’ve created.

This work of art seems to achieve the same objective, almost effortlessly. You know it’s one thing that i’ve noticed as well, that no matter who sort of witnesses it and – and you just get sucked into it and it’s involuntary it’s uh, there’s something that happens that at first there’s an analytical thing that happens with your mind when you Stare at this there’s like okay, i’m going to try and figure this out and the more you try and figure it out the more you you get sort of confused by it or or just thrown off by, because you realize that. There’s no point that I can focus on. Will help me understand this. You relinquish whatever hold you’re trying to have on it.

You almost surrender to it. I wanted to see people’s reaction to see if they felt as compelled by wonder as I did. We’ve got our wonder over here, and it is installed in this beautiful art gallery. Uh we’re gon na bring a few people here, friends of mine, uh who’ve not seen this thing. They have no idea, they don’t, they don’t know what it is, and I wanted to sort of capture their first impression of this art piece on camera.

So I bought a blindfold and we’re going to be bringing them in one by one. Coming this way, stan take a step, take a step too and move forward a little bit. One two three go: okay, interesting, i’m gon na look here you can take off the blindfold. Oh weird, it seems like it’s in 3d or something. Can I move around? Can I get up, it’s a trippy man like if you try to follow one spot, wow like how it is, if it is spinning it is going up or down or both it reminds me of space, kind of like water.

You know yeah and calm. Maybe come yeah yeah because it’s so it dude! It’s true like the more you like at first, you look at it and you go okay, it’s a moving statue, but then you try to anchor onto something and there’s nothing to hold on to because it’s moving up because yeah, it’s spinning right. So if it’s spinning, then it stands to reason that certain things are going up, but yeah, the more you try to understand it, the harder it is, wow. I love this thing.

It’s like mesmerizing melts your head yeah, but no, it’s just ever like it. Spins forever yeah it looks like it’s going slower, i don’t play tricks, i mean i, i have an energy about me. I know that and I know it’s not always ordinary. I mean I’m. I just love people, so I get buzzed when I’m with people.

So there’s kind of like I like the synchronicities of life and the coincidences and the funny things, but I haven’t had any tricks, but I can get you know. Magical things can happen just by the nature of connections and talking and all of that stuff. But this is the first thing: i’ve ever done. I kind of can’t believe I’ve made it in many many ways, but it’s um it it it had to happen. I don’t know whether there’s some sort of higher calling.

I don’t think there is. I think that imagination is the purest form of us. I think it’s one of the most remarkable aspects of the human condition. I think that i i feel blessed that i’ve managed to express what i describe as a feeling in this, and the feeling is one that i’ve definitely felt all my life is just not not consistently, and i think this could only have come through having all of The highs and all of the lows it’s like it’s a little bit, i don’t live in. I can be euphoric, but I don’t live in that.

I could be depressed, but I don’t live in that. But life has some um space and you are the wonder in the middle of it and whatever your up and down is it doesn’t matter? And if I don’t know how, I don’t know how exactly I’ve managed to get that feeling into a form. I don’t know the last two years. My experience, I’m probably sure it’s similar to you, there’s like we’ve, I’m done with people telling me what to do.

I’M done with people telling me this is how it is because the world’s been shifting and all of these directions and there’s all this separation and stuff, and i’m just like god, will we just we’ve got to rise above it, and maybe it’s an old world holding On to what was before, but the the best compliment i ever have with wonder is: is people go like? Is it real as my fascination with creating wonder through magic grows? I find that it can be found in so many places in science and art in nature, but ultimately I find it where it was meant to live in people. I sent that over again. Will you say hello to my son?

This is my. This is. What do you know exactly? Who is this? Hello, hi uh? Can you just think of a card?

Can you think of a card? Think of it, don’t say it, yeah. You can say what card is it? What are you thinking of eight to false ace of hearts of the eight or eight eight, the eight or the eight of hearts, the eight of hearts? Okay, um, we’re gon na try something with the uh with the eight of hearts.

Here let me give it a shuffle we’ll see if we can we’ll see if we can find it um. Can you say just, can you say, stop whenever you like? Tom has several smaller wonder pieces which will be for sale that he painstakingly creates one after another, so I’m making baby wonders. I’m like I can do a hundred a month. I can’t do more than that, because it’s so difficult to make. They’re just real , yeah, they’re really really tricky so we’re doing 100 a month and um I’ve sold the first hundred. I deliver those in December, so pre-orders are basically uplifted. Dot co dot uk is where i think they’re always going to be on pre-order.

To be honest, the universe is filled with wonder and Tom just found a way to shine a light on a small part of it. Thanks for watching this video, share it with your friends like comment subscribe. If you want to see more unusual content, bye.