Kinetic sculptor Bob Potts creates beautiful kinetic sculptures that mimic the motions of flight and the oars of boats. Despite their intricacy the pieces are surprisingly minimal, Potts seems to use only the essential components needed to convey each motion without much ornamentation or flourish. There is very little information online about the artist, however blogger Daniel Busby managed to get a brief interview with the 70-year-old artist last year. If you liked this, also check the work of Dukno Yoon . (via devid sketchbook)
Swiss designer and artist Paul Grundbacher makes incredible hand-cranked marble machines that he wrote about and filmed for Matthias Wandel’s Woodgears just this weekend. Grundbacher told Woodgears that he works mostly with firewood from a local factory and that he rarely sketches anything beforehand but has the ability to fashion each piece and try it as opposed to carefully measuring things out through any sort of blueprint. All the work here spans 2009-2012 and each piece is a mixture of his own ideas and tricks learned from watching videos of other artists creating similar wooden devices. You can read more about his inspiration and methodology behind each piece right here. (via mefi)
I’m really enjoying these kinetic sculptures by artist Laurent Debraux who works primarily with magnets, metallic objects and ferrofluid. The artist was just exhibiting at the Kinetica Art Fair in London and if you missed it head over to YouTube channel where you can catch over 30 videos of his work.
Unstable Matter is kinetic sculpture by Finnish artists Tommi Grönlund and Petteri Nisunen, a.k.a. Grönlund-Nisunen. The moving table contains thousands of small ball bearings that move and crash within the confines of a giant wobbly table, sort of a modern take on a rain stick. The table is part of several kinetic and magnetized works by the duo that were recently on view at Esther Schipper in Berlin.
South Korean artist Wang Zi Won constructs intricate mechanical figures of Buddha and bodhisattva that appear to be lost in meditation or enlightenment. The electrically-powered figures are fused with numerous mechanical components which at times resemble halos or lotus flowers and simultaneously move the humanoid figures through repetitive motions (see videos above). The artist says his intention is to examine a future where humans and technology merge, something he views in a particularly positive light. Via Shin Seung-ho of Dukwon Gallery:
The artist predicts that in the future humans will evolve and adapt themselves to enhanced science and technology just as men and animals in the past evolved to adapt themselves to their natural circumstances. He sees this future as our destiny, not as a negative, gloomy dystopia. His work is thus based on neither utopia not dystopia. Wang represents the relations between man, technology and science through the bodies of cyborgs.
The artist considers it important to escape from human bondage in order to achieve harmony between men and machines. He thinks this harmony can be achieved through the process of religious practices and spiritual enlightenment. In Buddhism, the Bodhisattva of Compassion helps people attain enlightenment, Arhat is a spiritual practitioner of asceticism, and Buddha is a being who reaches the highest level of enlightenment. Through them, the artist intends to follow the path of enlightenment, breaking away from anxiety, agony, and pain. The artist has no intention to emphasize religious connotations through these Buddhist icons but to reflect his own or our own existence between utopia and dystopia.
While it may be difficult to grapple with the artists intentions I find the figures and their motions to be really quite beautiful and indeed meditative, somewhat reminiscent of the robots used in Chris Cunningham’s amazing All is Full of Love video for Bjork. If you have some patience (the site loads quite slowly) there are many more examples of Wang’s work and several more videos over on his blog and you can learn more at Art Nova and Hanmi Gallery.
As part of his senior thesis exhibition at Musashino Art University in Tokyo, art student Yasutoki Kariya re-imagined the ubiquitous desktop gadget, Newton’s Cradle, using a lovely sequence of light bulbs. Entitled Asobi (which translates roughly as “playing“) the 11-bulb installation creates a visual interpretation of the popular toy named after Sir Isaac Newton demonstrating his third law of motion regarding momentum: that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. However, instead of actual energy created by the kinetic force of steel balls, Kariya devised a method for using programmed light and two surreptitiously placed pistons to create this purely visual experience that’s arguably more mesmerizing than the original concept.
As an added super bonus, the team over at the Experiments in Motion blog created the animation above which easily contends for one of the most beautiful animated gifs I’ve ever seen, already racking up over 167,000 shares on Tumblr this weekend.
Asobi was nominated for the 2012 Mitsubishi Junior Designer Award. (via spoon & tamago)
Berlin firm ART+COM just completed this stunning new kinetic sculpture in Terminal 1 of Changi Airport in Singapore. Kinetic Rain consists of two sets of 608 suspended raindrops made from lightweight aluminum covered in copper which are raised and lowered in a 15-minute computationally designed choreography controlled from motors embedded in the ceiling. ART+COM created a similar though somewhat smaller piece for the BMW Museum in 2008. (via hungeree)
The Page Turner is the latest device from New York born, New Zeland raised, and Brooklyn-based kinetic artist Joseph Herscher who builds elaborate Rube Goldberg machines that use complex chain reactions to complete mundane tasks. Some of Herscher’s effects here are subtle in their brilliance. He often creates small loops where his devices refer back to earlier steps, for instance the final state of step 25 is also used again as part of step 30. You can see more videos of his ingenious work here. (via automata, junk culture)
