Buckminster Fuller Challenge Prize Sculpture

The Buckminster Fuller Institute is pleased to present the Buckminster Fuller Challenge Prize sculpture, OmniOculi

http://challenge.bfi.org/prize/

created by artist Tom Shannon. The OmniOculi will be presented to Dr. John Todd, winner of the 2008 Buckminster Fuller Challenge, along with a check for $100,000 at a press conference and conferring ceremony, taking place at the Center for Architecture.

536 La Guardia Place, New York
City, Monday, June 23rd, 2008 at 2pm.

"The OmniOculi brilliantly embodies the spirit of The Buckminster Fuller Challenge and I anticipate it will become the icon by which our prize program is identified," said Elizabeth Thompson, Executive Director of the Buckminster Fuller Institute. "Artist Tom Shannon, with geodesic expertise provided by Fuller colleague Joseph Cl! inton, has somehow captured the dazzling beauty and geometric complexity at the heart of nature's design, as well it's infinite, universal and ever-changing interconnectedness. It is just amazing."

"When asked to conceive a sculpture to represent the Buckminster Fuller Challenge, I knew I wanted it to be as loaded with Fuller thinking as possible", explains Shannon. "Shape: spherical, because Bucky elucidated spheres perhaps more than anyone; geodesic patterning, because that's the special geometry with which he meant to emulate nature's behavior. It came to me to highly perforate the surface of the sphere so one could see the inside at the same time as the outside. The vertices would be open viewports like [Fuller's] fly's eye domes.

This sculpture is also an interactive optical instrument. The concave inside is mirror-polished so it produces in its center a hovering aerial real image while it inf! initely re-reflects the incoming light. The outside surface i! s also m irror reflective so it is omni-directionally visually alive with its changing surroundings.

The geodesic sphere is held by a hidden shaft seated in ball-bearings inset in the smaller sphere. This enables the geodesic sphere to be rotated or spun. The top half of the geodesic sphere is held in place by magnets so it can be removed occasionally for dusting the internal mirror."

Title: OmniOculi
Material: 2024 aluminum (w/ magnets and ball bearings)
Dimensions: 8 inch diameter sphere above 4 inch diameter sphere

Sculpture concept and design: Tom Shannon, http://tomshannon.com
Geodesic concept design: Joseph Clinton
Engineering, machining: BlueChip Engineering
Computer rendering: Jonah Tobias, 1Q.co! m
http://www.1q.com/

For more information about the OmniOculi, the prize conferring ceremony and other events taking place in New York City, please visit http://challenge.bfi.org and http://bfi.org