I can proudly say that I have made several attempts to solve the Rubik's Cube, but unfortunately, I have given up after many futile attempts? It takes a lot of patience and focus to solve this colourful yet tricky cube puzzle. But for 24-year-old Prithveesh K Bhat, solving a Rubik's Cube is like child's play. He's been a pro at this for some time now and even has his name down in the Guinness Book of World Records. And beyond just solving the puzzle, he has also created art using 4,500 cubes — he created two pictures on two sides of a giant Rubik's Cube. While one side of the assembled cube showed Charlie Chaplin, the other side represented Rowan Atkinson's Mr Bean. Later, he went on to create the portrait of a tiger using 1,200 cubes, a portrait of the late Dr Abdul Kalam with over 540 cubes and so on.
Prithveesh says, "I feel that a Rubik's Cube can be solved by anyone and doing something different with these cubes is what matters and is the test of true intelligence. With practice, I started an innovative form of art called Rubik's Cube Mosaic Art." After doing many portraits and artworks, Prithveesh was looking to create something different. That's when Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages Private Limited (HCCB), who was following Prithveesh's work, got in touch with him. They wanted him to create mosaic art for all their fruit juice products and beverages. Prithveesh explains, "This mosaic art consists of around 7,400 mini Rubik's Cubes that together showcase HCCB's diverse products including Fanta, Coca-Cola, Maaza and much more. It was a challenging task for me in terms of sourcing the right colours of Rubik's Cubes for the various products. Even a single wrong placement of any particular coloured cube would lead to distortion of the product."
As we all know, no one wakes up one fine day with extraordinary talent like this. Before attempting each of his creations, the Guinness World Record holder does several trials. "Usually, I don't perform the mosaic art directly using the cubes. I had developed a particular software during my graduation. This software helps me draw a rough sketch and create a graph of how to arrange particular coloured cubes to get the final picture. Later, I perform this in reality. I am happy that my mosaic art will be part of the HCCB's Experience Centre for people to understand the physics behind it."
Apart from creating mosaic art, he has also trained over 5,000 people in solving the Rubik's Cube through workshops pan India. He has also written a book based on easy and quick solutions to a Rubik's Cube. According to Prithveesh, it usually takes anywhere between a week to a month to learn how to solve a Rubik's Cube. He explains, "Solving a Rubik's Cube involves learning and unlearning, doing and undoing the puzzles. It depends on the person's eye, hand and brain co-ordination. If a person wants to attempt to solve a Rubik's Cube mosaic art, then they need at least three months to understand the concept."
