Artist/engineer Jeffrey Sgroi’s 3Tones are a new artform, made up out of thousands of tiny conical pits, drilled out by a computer-controlled router. By digitizing photographic images into halftones, then programming the drill to cut varying sized pits into a block of painted Corian, he’s able to achieve some really cool and unique art.

When you look each piece up close, it just looks like an abstract pattern, but when you stand back, you see a fully-formed photographic image. What’s really cool about this art is that it’s not just flat, and you can actually feel the texture of each image.

Even better yet, you can actually own one of these 3Tone images for yourself. After working out the process using equipment at TechShopRDU, Sgroi is raising funds over on Kickstarter to get his own production facility up and running. With a contribution of as little as $50(USD), you can have your very own 3Tone image of your choice.

A $50 pledge gets your a piece measuring approximately 50 square inches, using about 1400 holes. $80 gets you a 100 square inch piece with about 3000 holes, $175 buys a 250 square inch/7,000 hole image, and so on… all the way up to a ginormous 800 square inch 3Tone image made up of somewhere around 23,000 individual holes. You also can choose from white or “vanilla” Corian, as well as black, midnight blue or black paint.

Assuming the project reaches its $21,000 funding goal by March 11th, Jeffrey expects to start shipping 3Tone images this April. Head on over to Kickstarter to order yours now!

[Thanks for the tip, Jeffrey!]

The system used an array of thousands of individual mechanical irises, each designed to react to the amount of light in front of it. The darker the subject, the wider the aperture would open, resulting in a real-time halftone effect.

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Designed by Berlin interactive artists Gunnar Green and Frederic Eyl, Aperture never made it past the prototype stage. It’s a really cool idea, reminiscent of the mechanical mirrors of Daniel Rozin, and I hope someday they decide to resurrect it for more of us to see up close.