Design and special effects experts say that the boulders appearing around the world are not difficult to replicate. (This does not mean you should try.)

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Staying inside, watching social media on your phone, and getting bored with the content on the streaming media may start to seem like a good idea. You might say that a boulder can add a touch of mystery to your local wilderness, might make people laugh, or at least distract them with a literally shiny object.

They appeared in Utah, California and Romania. There is a three-foot tall one in downtown Fayetteville, North Carolina, and another on the beach on the Isle of Wight, England.

Of course, there are many reasons not to build a monolithic application. Legality: In addition to trespassing on private land, unauthorized installation of buildings is also illegal in many places, including millions of acres of federally managed public land in Utah, where a 10-foot stainless steel object was found last month , Inspiring the world of imitators around. Untrained metal products can be dangerous, and a large, unstable metal object can be dangerous to people and the environment around it. There are cheaper, simpler, clearer, legal, and less harmful ways to pass the time (books, walks, projects that don’t involve the whole).

However, people are still making boulders. And your own property is your own property. Therefore, if the holiday decorations on your front lawn are very eye-catching, please consider the following points.

It is not clear how many people have built boulders because they have backyards and easy-going neighbors, rooms with high ceilings, or the ambition of only building small boulders that can mysteriously cover the dining table.

The most famous boulder, all the headlines you have seen, are based on more controversial places. After the Utah boulder was discovered, the Bureau of Land Management stated that it “want to remind visitors of public land that unauthorized use, occupation, or development of public land or its resources is illegal.”

The construction of a boulder seems to result in the demolition of a boulder, if not by the authorities, then by ordinary people. Soon after discovery, other objects were removed from a parking lot in San Diego, a mountain in Atascadero, California, and a plateau in Romania.

The Utah boulder uses rivets to secure stainless steel parts, officials said. In the video of four men carrying the boulder away in the dead of night, its interior seems to show a plywood frame.

"They are very simple in terms of construction and design," said Anita La Scala, founder of ARDA Studio, a theater and event design company in New York. Rob Bissinger, another ARDA founder and designer, said that the metal plates are available in a variety of sizes, and the metal can be fixed, welded or bent around the frame to form an overall shape.

"The size is not that strange," Mr. Bisinger said. "You can order them and no one will say,'Oh, are you building boulders in the desert?'"

The inner frame can be made of plywood or materials along these lines and cut into triangles with a simple hand saw or circular saw. Ms. La Scala said that more ambitious overall builders can use CNC machines (a computer-controlled cutting tool) to make frames, and they can cut metal into panels with water jets to lighten the edges so they are not a rough Cut." Sheet metal brakes can bend metal, but may not bend in large sections.

Mr. Bisinger said that a pickup truck, jeep or rental truck may be enough to transport these supplies. In order to install a whole, the designer said that the base can be a concrete footing or a metal footing, such as steel bars. Or, Mr. Bisinger said, the boulder builders can simply dig a hole under the frost line and fill the bottom with aggregate or sandbags, "just like you put it in a mailbox."

Salt Lake City artist Dan Toone said that photos of the Utah boulder show that its creator used a concrete saw to cut the rock, installed wood or metal frames, and then installed metal plates on site. "It's very clean and very well done," he said. "Someone did it professionally."

Overall, this is not a very expensive process. Scott Neal, a professor of landscape architecture at Trinity University, said that the cost of low-end monomers may be as low as US$200 to US$300. He said that such objects can be completed by someone with "medium skills" in a theater's scene shop or someone's garage, using metal scissors or an acetylene flashlight.

He said that a more expensive and more complex version might cost $1,000 or $2,000.

In order to strengthen the Utah-style building, special effects artist Jamie Heinerman, who has long served as the host of the "Mythbusters" show, said that builders can coat the wooden frame with epoxy resin to fix the metal plate, and then place it on it. Another board. Place a heavy object on the top for several hours to fix the structure.

He also outlined another, stronger version of the monolith, which would use thick metal sheets cast into the corners of a triangle to hold three metal plates together. This structure may require more work to chamfer the edges of the metal plate and create corner fasteners, but the whole can still be prepared in a day or two.

"You can almost specify all of these things in some mechanical workshops and then assemble it," he said. "It's really a very simple thing."

He warned that the devil was in the details. Thinner metal will make the overall look "a little warped" and will require counter-drilling of the metal. Cardboard can help prevent scratches when moving the boulder, and rope can help lift it. Steel bars drilled into the base and inserted into the ground can fix it.

For purists, a boulder is a large block, usually made of stone, in the style of an obelisk or geometric slab, just like the rectangle in "2001: A Space Odyssey". University of Houston professor and Kubrick biographer David Mickicis said that the film’s director Stanley Kubrick initially wanted a transparent object.

"He ordered a huge Lucite, which is the largest Lucite object in history," Mr. Mikikis said. But when the object was delivered, Kubrick was disappointed that it was not actually completely transparent. Therefore, he ordered a new prop and painted it in matte black over and over again. "Of course it's a good idea, it's like an abyss," Mr. Mikikis said.

But an object with overall scale and consistency is usually also called a whole. Artist John McCracken used rectangular plywood covered with fiberglass to make monolithic wood panels, painted in a single color and highly polished. One piece was sold at auction this year for $400,000. British landscape designer Max Dorey said that a boulder found on a beach in England this month may not be expensive; it can be made with industrial adhesives to glue the glass mirror to the wooden center.

In at least two cases, the group has stood up and claimed responsibility for the nearest boulder. The four artist makers of Atascadero stated that their work appeared in Utah and made headlines about two weeks later-with the goal of becoming "a piece of guerrilla art." A group called "Most Famous Artists" in New Mexico also claimed responsibility for this, but did not specify any details.

"Monument was built by a distributed community of interdisciplinary artists," the organization said in response to an email. "Many imitators have appeared, and we are celebrating everyone's contribution to the global artistic phenomenon."

But most boulders cannot be explained. Observers generally believe that no matter what the purpose of the Utah object is, the boulders that follow are imitators of people looking for things to do. "The festival is over and the theater is closed," Mr. Doray said. "Everyone has time."

Mr. Heinemann has a similar view: "Everyone must have their own hobbies."