Alexander Calder (1898-1976) an innovative genius who profoundly changed the course of modern art. He is famous and known for the invention of the mobile, whose suspended, abstract elements move and balance in changing harmony. To respect and honor the genius on his 113th birthday, a new interactive Google doodle has appeared on Google’s home page.
The specialty of the doodle is, as you click and drag with your mouse over the google doodle, the various sections of the mobile starts to move around. 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. Do not miss out to notice the mobile’s shadow on the “floor” underneath which is just mind-blowing.

According to the official Google blog, it’s the first google doodle made by using HTML5 Canvas, so its creators recommend that you use “a modern browser.” It’s been noticed that interactive animation works best on Google Chrome 12 browser, but not on Firefox 5.0 or Internet Explorer 9. Jered Wierzbicki, software engineer of Google says, “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.”