Theo Jansen – creating mechanical 'life'
Theo Jansen blends the line between art and engineering, this Dutch visual artist creates kinetic sculptures: “life” in the form of “animals” that walk the beach. For the last 17 years, he has been creating and evolving a series of wind-powered animals made of plastic tubes. Powered (fed) by the wind, they start moving and turn eerily mobile creatures Jansen calls ‘beach-animals’.
Jansen explains how his creatures operate: Self-propelling beach animals like Animaris Percipiere have a stomach . This consists of recycled plastic bottles containing air that can be pumped up to a high pressure by the wind. This is done using a variety of bicycle pump, needless to say of plastic tubing. Several of these little pumps are driven by wings up at the front of the animal that flap in the breeze. It takes a few hours, but then the bottles are full. They contain a supply of potential wind.
Take off the cap and the wind will emerge from the bottle at high speed. The trick is to get that untamed wind under control and use it to move the animal. For this, muscles are required. Beach animals have pushing muscles which get longer when told to do so. These consist of a tube containing another that is able to move in and out.
There is a rubber ring on the end of the inner tube so that this acts as a piston. When the air runs from the bottles through a small pipe in the tube it pushes the piston outwards and the muscle lengthens. The beach animal's muscle can best be likened to a bone that gets longer. Muscles can open taps to activate other muscles that open other taps, and so on. This creates control centres that can be compared to brains.
When asked, ‘What will be the next steps?’ in an interview with Sebastian Campion, Jansen replied, “I think the next steps will be their brains. Now they have stomachs and can walk on air. But the brains are something, which they really need. Right now, I can only leave them alone for 5 minutes and if I want to extend that period they really must learn to think for themselves.”
For the full interview please click http://www.artificial.dk/articles/theojansen.htm
You can learn more about Theo Jansen on his excellent website http://www.strandbeest.com
Stephen Wiltshire - A living camera and a superb artist.
Stephen Wiltshire was born mute in London to West Indian parents on 24th April, 1974. At the age of three he was diagnosed as an autistic and expressed an interest in drawing at school when he was five. He began to use his drawings to communicate and his teachers at Queensmill School encouraged him to speak by temporarily taking away his art supplies so that he would be forced to ask for them.Stephen responded by making sounds and eventually uttered his first word - "paper." He learned to speak fully at the age of nine.
Wiltshire's incredible ability is that he can look at a target once and then draw an accurate and detailed picture of it. He once drew the whole of central London after a helicopter trip above it.
In May 2005 Stephen produced his longest ever panoramic memory drawing of Tokyo on a 10-meter long canvas. After a brief helicopter ride, it took him seven days to paint. Since then he has drawn Rome, Hong Kong and Frankfurt on giant canvasses, and is in the process of drawing Madrid, after taking a 30 minute helicopter ride on Saturday February 2, 2008.
When Wiltshire took the helicopter ride over Rome, he drew it in such great detail that he drew the exact number of columns in the Colosseum!
You can learn more about Stephen Wiltshire by visiting www.stephenwiltshire.co.uk
The world's largest drawing?
This drawing created a big buzz on the internet recently. Apparently, an 'artist' called Antti Laitinent shipped a briefcase with a GPS tracker around the world with DHL with precise touting instructions and this drawing was the result.
Unfortunately, that was not quite true - well the story was, but not the drawing.
Antti Laitinent (an advertising student) did send this GPS tracking equipped briefcase around with DHL . . . as a publicity campaign for DHL.
The resulting image, a self portrait, turned out like this.
Still, it was a great idea which worked: it did generate a lot of noise about DHL and it must be the world's biggest self portrait.
The sensational Pilobolus shadow dance troupe
The word 'Pilobolus' initially referred to a sun-loving fungus, however, since they performed at the "2007 Academy Awards" and on "Oprah", 'Pilobolus' has become synonomous with inventive and provocative shadow dancing.
While Pilobolus has attracted a lot of high-profile media attention in the last couple of years, the Washington-based dance troupe was formed in 1971 and is approaching its 4th decade.
Today Pilobolus is recognized as a major American dance company of international influence.
The company remains a deeply collaborative effort with an executive director, three artistic directors and seven dancers contributing to one of the most popular and varied repertoires in the field.
Their many decades of consistent artistic activity stand as a testament to the group's remarkable fruitfulness and longevity.
For more information please check out www.pilobolus.com
MUTO: an incredible stop-motion animation video by BLU
Italian artist Blu has already made an impressive reputation for himself with his massive wall murals. With his MUTO project, he has now brought his drawings to life!
For MUTO, Blu has created a sophisticated stop-motion animation video using only wall paintings. This was done in Buenos Aires and Baden.
The result is a seven minute animated film with a surreal cast of - sometimes disturbing - characters moving around walls, across the ground and interacting with many of the objects they encounter along the way.
For more information of this talented artist, please check out his website at www.blublu.org