Google Doodle Honors Alexander Calder

A new interactive Google doodle has appeared on Google.com, honoring artist Alexander Calder, who is known for inventing the mobile.

As you click and drag with your mouse, the various sections of the mobile move around. According to the official Google Blog, it’s the first doodle Google’s made that uses HTML5 Canvas, so its creators recommend that you use “a modern browser.”

We noticed the interactive animation works on Google‘s Chrome 12 browser, but not on Firefox 5.0 or Internet Explorer 9. We’re also seeing reports that the animation causes a crash in Firefox on Linux, so if that’s your browser, you might want to avoid this doodle. Note that others are reporting these browsers are able to display the animation. Best way to find out if yours works is to go to Google.com and try it.

“It runs a physics simulation on the mobile’s geometry, and then does realtime 3D rendering with vector graphics. Only recently have browsers advanced to the point where this is possible.”

It’s a graceful work of art that the Googlers have created here, with pieces of the mobile interacting with each other and with your cursor, just the way a mobile in the physical world would work. Notice the additional, subtle detail — the mobile’s shadow on the “floor” underneath. Brilliant.

Each package gets larger with a mouse-over, and a click on it returns search results pertinent to a specific country or the particular items featured in a scene. This one is from December 24, 2010.

I saw the Calder exhibit at SAM (Seattle Art Museum)… it was AMAZING! …It’s really cool that they honored him with this Google Doodle. Looks exactly like one if his pieces.

My two favorite Calder pieces were also his largest – two DC-8 “Flying colors” aircraft painted in 1973 for Braniff International Airlines. Sure beats the liveries of today’s American, Delta & United fleets…

I accidentally jiggled my laptap and the doodle moved as if it was being shaken. I have tried this a bunch and I don’t think I am hallucinating…. it is late though… (Google Chrome 12)

Doodle is working on FF 5.0. This is first Doodle by Google where they not focusing on character branding of GOOGLE. What you think about it?

Win7, 64-bit, IE9 – rendering beautifuly, highly interactive… better, i.e. more responsive, increased shadow rendering, on Chrome, however.

Google published a doodle today that commemorates artist Alexander Calder with an interactive sculpture that sways when a person tilts an accelerometer-equipped laptop.

Calder is famous for sculptures he called mobiles–hanging weights and struts that are carefully counterbalanced so they slowly drift into new configurations. The Google doodle, published on Calder’s 113th birthday, tilts when a laptop tilts and slowly spins if a person clicks and drags on the sculpture.

Mashable is the largest independent online news site dedicated to covering digital culture, social media and technology. With more than 50 million monthly pageviews and 3.6 million followers across social media, Mashable has one of the most engaged online news communities. Founded in 2005, Mashable is headquartered in New York City with an office in San Francisco.