thecages

I'm generally uncomfortable with the ad campaigns that vorsprung-type companies deploy from time to time - the type where they showcase the revolutionary

work of an artist or architect (including a suitably thoughful voice-over by said artist/architect) and then add their little badge onto it at the end.
What it's saying is: 'Here's this fantastic person and his/her visionary work. Oh, and we're also as cool as they are.' plhhhhh!

A new campaign by BMW is a perfect example of this. It features dutch artist Theo Jansen and his mind-blowing kinetic sculptures. Anita and I were literally gasping the first time we saw them move - these are some of the most beautiful things I've seen in years.

So, yuck to BMW for glueing themselves remora-like to the artist, but kudo's to BMW for supporting him and letting us see his work.


On to his Strandbeest kinetic sculptures.

From his site (grammar and all :)

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 matierial of this new nature. He makes skeletons which are able to walk on the wind. Eventualy he wants to put these animals out in herds on the beaches, so they will live their own lives.

The video clips are a recommended download as it's really only when they are in motion that they make sense.
Animaris Geneticus Ondula (2.5 MB)
Animaris Currens Ventosa walking (654 KB)
Animaris Currens Ventosa waving (1.9 MB)

His beasts are made from PVC piping used to construct a skeleton and a forest of twitching legs (mergers of crab and centipede) that are powered by rotors or reptilian wings on their backs.
The wind power is transferred in the most amazing way to these hordes of legs and, yes, they walk.
And they don't shuffle along; they zoom - a human has to trot to keep up with them.
The effect is mezmerizing.


The engineering of these sculpture is just as fascinating; combining the simplicity of leverage with the elegance of one of the sweetest things in all of com-sci: genetic algorithms.


It is a great comfort to me to know that are artists and engineers and architects and computer geeks out there building wild things like this.
While the are at it (and each of us does the same in small ways) there's no reason to fear the banality of malls and American Idol.