art, bicycles, engineering, fabrication

Animated Retroreflective Safety Signage

I’ve been playing with a new process in which I remove the silvering of mirrors in detailed patterns,  leaving optically clear glass.

A zone plate made of mirror and optically clear glass zones will focus images in both reflectance and transmission. The focal length of this plate, at visible wavelengths, is too long to be practical though. I'm experimenting with shorter focal length, finer ring spacing, zone plates.
A zone plate made of mirror and optically clear glass zones will focus images in both reflectance and transmission. The focal length of this plate, at visible wavelengths, is too long to be practical though. I’m experimenting with shorter focal length, finer ring spacing, zone plates.

My first experiment was to make a Zone Plate,  but my current process didn’t have enough resolution to make fine enough lines for a zone plate of short focal length at normal visible wavelengths around 600nm:

However, the process is fantastic for barrier grid a.k.a. moiré a.k.a. ‘strip’ animations,  and for an afternoon project this has borne incredible fruit:  only about a dozen promising directions to go from here!  I decided to focus first on making an animated cautionary text and moving image safety sign for vehicles, especially bicycles,  especially helpful for night-time visibility.