WHAT EFFECT DOES REMOVING AREAS OF THE MIRRORS SILVERING HAVE SO THAT LIGHT CAN SHINE THROUGH?
Viewed along the kaleidoscope’s axis there was very little effect, at least in a nontapered, two mirror system. Viewed from a lower angle the openings weakly suggested lighted discs floating in space over the mandala. One of the problems with this concept is that it makes it easy to spot the mirrors and in so doing weakens the mysterious effect of the image seemingly produced out of nothing. Also, the non-silvered areas weakened the image. Here’s a picture of a kaleidoscope with a curved area of silvering removed from the bottom of one mirror: This might be more interesting if the kaleidoscope’s separation angle was greatly reduced so that the bright, glowing mounds were close enough to blur together. This got me wondering about physically removing sections of the mirrors and then bending the object window to follow their shape. The following picture shows how this looks when the inside corner of each mirror is cut off: Viewed from a low angle the image had a very strong 3D appearance.
