I’m guilty of going off on tangents. Yesterday, in Manic Monday, I featured artist Janet Echelman. That led me to find a couple of other bits of art and artists worth mentioning.
The first is a bit of kinetic sculpture by Theo Jansen. He has designed sculptures in the shape of bizarre animals that can walk by way of wind power.
According to Wikipedia:
Theo Jansen has been creating wind-walking examples of artificial life since 1990. What was at first a rudimentary breed has slowly evolved into a generation of machines that are able to react to their environment: “over time, these skeletons have become increasingly better at surviving the elements such as storms and water, and eventually I want to put these animals out in herds on the beaches, so they will live their own lives.”
Constructed as intricate assemblages of piping, wood, and wing-like sails, Jansen’s creatures are constantly evolving and have become excellently adapted to their sandy beach environment. The creatures sport legs, which “prove to be more efficient on sand than wheels…they don’t need to touch every inch of the ground along the way, as a wheel has to”.
The other fascinating sculpture I found was the Singing Ringing Tree in Burnley, England. The sculpture was designed by architects Mike Tonkin and Anna Liu of Tonkin Liu.
