Designer Love Hultén is probably best known for his Pixel Vision, a tiny portable gaming machine made of wood that’s reminiscent of the folding Game Boy Advance. His latest creation doesn’t play games, but it does generate mesmerising fractals guaranteed to burn hours of time.
Unlike the Pixel Vision, the new Echo Observatory isn’t available for sale — at least yet. It’s currently just a one-off creation, made of walnut wood with brass accents, that generates complex fractal patterns that can be manipulated, rotated, modified and zoomed using a series of knobs and a small joystick.
There’s no goal to get to, no perfect fractal to generate, and no high scores. The Echo Observatory is an art piece as much as it is an interactive toy that promises to suck up any free time the user might have available — plus several hours more.