The Vladmaster

Rob Walker’s latest Consumed column in the NY Times looks at the resurgence of the View-Master. We’ve been watching quite a lot of retro-tech hacking recently and Rob points to another example – the Vladmaster created (and sold) by a Portland Artist:

As a creator and a shopper, Vladimir had always favored the handmade or the thrift-store-found. These two preferences came together when she started making her own reels for secondhand View-Masters in 2003, starting by interpreting four of Franz Kafka’s terse “parables.” She read up on how to make 3-D photographs, built her own scenes on a card table and glued the images into custom-printed reels. She packaged these in slim boxes of her own design and sold them at local craft fairs.

…She also sells them through her own Web site and on Etsy.com, the online emporium of handmade goods. In fact, Vladimir says the Internet, that most killer of apps, has been crucial to the Vladmaster catching on as an example of just how malleable media forms can be: what was meant as an educational tool and turned into a toy has emerged again with yet another life.

Consumed – Rob Walker – Toys – Children and Youth – New York Times