Mirrors drip down the wall

Mirrors have a long history in novels of magic and fantasy, but the glass that goes into them still provides a source of mystery even in the realm of science – is it a supercooled solid or a highly viscous liquid, for instance?

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This series of strangely liquid-like mirrors titled Mizukagami toys with this dual nature in visual terms, creating pools, puddles, pours and spills that appear to be frozen in mid-movement. The project is a collaboration between Rikako Nagashima, a young art director at ad agency Hakuhodo, and Hideto Hyoudou, an acrylic craftsman.

Mizukagami mirror art Rikako Nagashima

Still not sure you believe that some argue for the liquidity of glass (be it in telescope lenses, old windows or new mirrors)? Philip Gibbs of the University of California explains it plainly: “In terms of molecular dynamics and thermodynamics it is possible to justify various different views that it is a highly viscous liquid, an amorphous solid, or simply that glass is another state of matter that is neither liquid nor solid.”

Mirrors Drip Mizukagami

The objects were available for purchase at Mitsubai Tokyo, accompanied by the following text (spuriously translated from Japanese via Google): “In a small white room. Water that has stopped moving, as if time had stopped. It was a time when I was walking slowly between the waters at the moment of spilling, swaying, and dripping, as if to check the time when I stopped. I was drawn to the work on the wall that caught my eye. .. .. When I faced the work, huh. .. .. When. I felt that the world was a little distorted in me.”

Mirrors drip down tables

About Rikako Nagashima

With graphic design at the core, the designer’s activities include identity design, sign planning, book design, and spatial design. Environmental considerations are foremost in her designs, and she works with an awareness of the environmental damage caused by design, such as intentionally incorporating ink stains and scrap paper generated in the printing process as a pattern to avoid creating waste (David Lynch, ‘From the Fringes of the Mind’), spatial design that uses offcut fabric from product manufacture (DESCENTE BLANC, ’10th exhibition’), or textile design in which ink stains on scrap paper are printed on fabric made from recycled plastic bottles (kinnand, ‘Scrap_CMYK’).”