Someone Built a Rock-Sorting Robot and It Is Downright Hypnotizing

The Iller river stretches for 91 miles through southeastern Germany before meeting up with the Danube. This river, like all rivers, is filled with sediment-- rocks and pebbles from thousands of years ago that sit on the riverbed and along the bank. One day last year, Benjamin Maus was lounging near the Iller admiring a handful of pebbles. "I was basically just sorting pebbles and spraying them with sunscreen, which made the colors much more vivid," Maus recalls. At the time Maus, an artist, had no clue that these pebbles would inspire his latest work.