Theo Jansen's Kinetic Sculptures



HT to href="http://markmaynard.com/index.php/2007/06/06/theo_jansen">Mr.
Maynard for pointing this out.  (He also pointed out
the Corner
Brewery,
which is an even more remarkable invention.)



The creator is rel="tag">Theo Jansen:





i-33ec6eb0d3c9a09f0413f97a137bdc2b-theo001.jpg

face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">Theo Jansen, artist,
studied science at the
University of Delft Holland. The first seven years being a artist he
just made paintings. Then he starts a project with a big flying saucer,
which could really fly. It flew over the town of Delft in 1980 and
brought the people in the street and the police in commotion. Since
about ten years he is occupied with the making of a new nature. Not
pollen or seeds but plastic yellow tubes are used as the basic
material of this new nature. He makes skeletons which are able to walk
on the wind. Eventually he wants to put these animals out in herds on
the beaches, so they will live their own lives...





Very interesting. I am especially fond of the last one shown, near the
end of the video.  If you are curious about the elaborate
pantograph-like
mechanism that makes these things ambulate, there is a
video animation:









Jansen
says
"The walls between art and engineering exist only in our minds."
 The video of him saying that is href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=WcR7U2tuNoY">here,
but I don't think I'll put a third video in this post.  After
all, blogging has limits, even if they are only in our minds.



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