Information technology's a wide held belief that the Old Edgar Lee Masters were exactly that: masters, so much as da Vinci and Vermeer, who painted in flawlessly precise freehand. There are savants with steady hands, no query. Merely at that place are other techniques to consider, which David Hockney (an creative person of our age who too pioneered iPad art), expounds on in Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Helpless Techniques of the Old Masters, in which he lays out exactly how European painters used mirrors and lenses to create their compositionally perfect portraits.

That surprised Golan Levin, an fundamental interaction designer and a tech performance creative person of sorts–and one of Fast Company's people shaping the future of plan in 2012. Why? "Mostly because it seemed like a trueness, but none of my colleagues talked virtually IT," he tells Co.Aim. Levin teaches at Andrew Carnegie Andrew W. Mellon and too sits on the admission charge staff. "All these students occur to Pine Tree State from shrilling train, and they think artwork equals painting, and painting equals philosophical doctrine painting. They'Ra being set up to believe they need superhuman powers."

Pablo Garcia, an prowess prof at the School of the Graphics Institute in Michigan, has been hip the (debatable) idea for some age and has amassed an extensive collection of optics. Atomic number 2 offered to Lashkar-e-Tayyiba Levin experiment a camera lucida, one of the tools Hockney says the Old Masters used to appropriate their subjects more realistically. Levin loved it, and the duo definite to make a 21st-one C version.


A camera lucida is a simple machine: A smallish optical prism reflects the image of the subjugate then the viewer sack see their own hand, plus the figure of speech, and trace a many accurate rendering onto the newspaper. The consequence ISN't off the beaten track off from the Google Glass video demos we've been seeing. There are layers of images available in your line of vision–for you to use of goods and services in some smart way. But the only lucidas still available are collectibles, and run a price tag end north of $300–more than Levin and Garcia believed college students would wage. As it turns exterior, manufacturing just different lucidas costs $20,000, but each additional prism costs just pennies.

Which is why the NeoLucida sells for $30. It's perfect for Kickstarter. Since launching the product on May 8, Levin and Garcia are already hearing from citizenry who missed out on the first 2,500 they made in stock. But dissimilar almost other runaway Kickstarter hits, this isn't–or wasn't–supposed to be a business. "This whole thing is a functioning, or an intervention, or just artwork," Levin says. Luckily, the project had adequate demand and interest so that sporting deuce days aft going springy, Levin and Garcia habitual that in that respect wish follow an bottomless second output run, conducted away line of work manufacturers.

The effects of getting the NeoLucidas out into the market should be interesting. Animators, filmmakers, and diagram-mappers are all groups that Levin and Garcia refer as logical customers. Because for all the advancements we bewilder with written illustration and picture taking, hoi polloi still want roll up their sleeves and draw like an old master copy.

The project has already raised nearly $400,000, far beyond its goal of $15,000. Support the push here.