Michael F. Chan's Visions of the Amen

This is an interesting sculpture... It is activated by sound (the singer in the video is Ashleigh Semkiw). Each string is activated by a different note and is has spin velocity based upon volume. It was done using Processing.

Pretty cool, but I wish the video was better at showing the strings transitioning from one shape to another.

Somewhat related: my Study for a Vocoder

[via Make]

Kenny Marshall's "prototype for an infinite array of semi-autonomous percussive devices"

Kenny Marshall has portfolio full of interesting kinetic work. He describes his prototype for an infinite array of semi-autonomous percussive devices as being:

... a group of small robotic sculptures, each connected to its immediate neighbors via wires, that together form a net of robotic life that spreads across the Garden at the Mattress Factory and over nearby structures. These twenty-five mechanical crickets fill the garden with sound as they listen to their neighbors and act accordingly during Pittsburgh's Robot250 festival. Using Dr. John Conway’s rules for The Game of Life, each robot activates when a preset number of his neighbors is active and deactivates if too few or too many of his neighbors are active.

The Game of Life is an interesting simulation of simple life that been a favorite of geeky-types since 1970. Worth checking out (if you're a geeky-type).

Edith Kollath's "disport."

Edith Kollath has a series of works about breathing.  Here's her disport. (2009, mixed media installation):

Kollath writes about disport.:

As you approach this room installation (diameter app. 14'2", height app. 10'6") you'll recognize an organic   movement resembling a breath movement executed by free-flowing textiles.  These textiles form a cell, which is based on the shape of a pentagon. Its walls consist of white transparent chiffons organized in layers within a trapezoid.  Each trapezoid module continually slides away from the center and returns again in a regular rhythm. Opening - closing, inhale - exhale.... Simultaneously, the light inserted in the central pentagon shape shifts from a warmer darker tone to a brighter cooler white.

You are invited to enter the cell. How do you perceive the room, how do you perceive yourself? How does the cell affect the encounters with other people? By creating an immersive accessible room installation fully controlled by an Arduino Microcontroller I explore phenomenological questions.

Pe Lang + Zimoun's "untitled sound objects"

Pe Lang + Zimoun are a Swiss art-making duo whose works usually involve many small motors that make sound and motion.

I particularly like their "swarm of prepared vibration motors" from 2008:

See a better quality video of the work

Pe Lang + Zimoun currently have work in a show with Tim Knowles at Bitforms. Read more about that show on Rhizome.

Reuben Margolin's Magic Wave

Reuben Margolin's Magic Wave (installed at the Swiss Center for Technorama near Zurich) employs 450 suspended aluminum rods on 256 wires with 3,000 pulleys and sliding bars (and no computers or microcontrollers) to create a wave-like motion.



Margolin has an earlier & smaller version, The Wave (2005), that uses cams to achieve the motion:



Visit Margolin's website for videos of The Wave.

See my earlier posting about Tim Prentice for a sculpture that achieve similar motion using wind power.

Subway kinetics

The details about this sculpture aren't available... It appears to be by Mudlevel and to take place in a German-speaking country. I love how it uses the transportation systems for power and its organ-grinder look.

[via Make]

Heidi Kumao: Misbehaving

I recently came across Heidi Kumao's very interesting (and poetic) kinetic and cinematic machines. From Kumao's Misbehaving: Media Machines Act Out, 2002-2008 statement:

Misbehaving is a series of three female "performers" for intimate installations. In each tableau, a hybrid machine "being" performs: a kinetic, electronically controlled machine speaks with a visual voice of erratic physical gestures and video imagery. As a combination of performance and robotics, they represent girls and women who disobey or resist expectations. Unlike machines designed for perfect job performance, these machines will declare their fallibility, impatience, approval, and disapproval through small gestural acts and embedded video sequences. In contrast to the precise technique and tireless efforts of a robot that plays chess or constructs automobiles, my robotic performers "act out" and misbehave. In these tableaus of protest and transformation, the machine is spirited, emotional, thoughtful, yet irregular.

From Kumao's website:


Translator, 2008, Heidi Kumao
Aluminum legs, plastic bowl, half-scale chairs with video projector heads, wooden table, parts from garage door opener and bicycles, 82 x 168 x 36 inches.

Viewers hand-crank a garage door opener to move the girl between opposing armchairs that have video projector heads. As she moves from one projector to the other, two different sets of imagery appear on her bowl-shaped torso. Like a child caught between two feuding parents, a political mediator, or a mind that alternates between two thoughts, the body of the "translator" switches identities from chair to chair. On one side, the "go-between" unzips her clothes to reveal herself, and on the other side, she closes her torso to conceal whatever information might have been visible.

Resist, 2002-2004, Heidi Kumao
Girl's shoes, aluminum, motors, customized electronics, microphone, wood and plexiglass platform.

A machine portrait: audio-activated 6-year-old girl's legs. As viewers speak to this character, the legs begin a series of random behaviors from imperceptible movement to violent and fast kicking. Her actions leave permanent marks on the floor.

See more work by Kumao

Susan Robb's "Warmth Giant Black Toobs"

Susan Robb is a Seattle-based artist whose work includes these 50' long, air-filled, sun-powered sculptures made out of garbage-can liners:

Warmth Giant Black Toobs, 2007
Susan Robb

At first the tubes seem to be moving in slow motion, but when humans enter the frame it becomes clear that the video's speed isn't manipulated.

Robb has also done some work where she creates a face out of landscape using image mirroring:

I Am A Land Animal, 2008
Susan Robb
Epson archival inkjet print, paper, glass, powder coated steel shelf
22 x 28 x 6 inches

It reminded me a bit of Anthroptic, a project I did with author Benjamin Rosenbaum in which we used facial recognition software to find faces where none exist (and tied them together using short stories):

"Citizens" from Anthroptic, 2006
Ethan Ham & Benjamin Rosenbaum
Photograph & audio

The story which goes with Citizens is one of my favorites from the series (I also particularly like The Gardeners of Rhododendrons). Click here to hear the audio read by the wonderful Vanessa Hart (or here to read the text).

Sculpture in Motion

The Atlanta Botanical Garden has a kinetic sculpture exhibit through October 31st. The show includes a couple of artists I blogged about before ( see the Tim Prentice and Sachiko Kodama posts).

In addition to Prentice's & Kodama's works, Zachary Coffin's Rockspinner 6 (2007) stands out:


To build the sculpture, Coffin found the exact center of gravity of the five-ton granite boulder and inset an extremely low-friction bearing and installed it on top of a stainless steel shaft.

Also notable is David Fried's Self Organizing Still Life (SOS), Terra Incognita (2008, 34" x 55" x 67"):


Other self-organizing still lifes (lives?) can be seen here.

I'm struck how Coffin and (especially) Fried have hidden the high tech processes & materials to present a seemingly simply work of art.

Machines by Michael Kontopoulos

Machines that Almost Fall Over from Michael Kontopoulos



Machine that Tries to Draw Circles from Michael Kontopoulos

[via John Michael Boling at Rhizome]

Ranjit Bhatnagar's Trumpet Marine

Ranjit Bhatnagar's acoustic/kinetic sculpture Trumpet Marine was part of the 2008 Figment Festival on Governor's Island in the NYC harbor.


[via Make]

Sachiko Kodama's ferrofluid sculptures

Sachiko Kodama's odd magnetic sculptures are included in a group kinetic sculpture show at Atlantic Botanical Gardens.

Morpho Tower, 2008, 18" x 23" x 23", steel, marble, ferrofluid and electronics

[via LeisureGuy]

Windows Washing Machine

By Harm Van Den Dorpel. I do wish it would rotate faster. Van Den Dorpel says:

Sculpture made out of a 'normal' personal computer, an electrical tincan-opener, an alu-frame and two roadbricks.

The computer rotates 360 degrees around its axis. All desktop elements such as windows, buttons and scrollbars respond to the constantly changing direction of gravity: they fall to the bottom of the screen all the time.
A little stone is attached to the mouse which is also connected to the computer and functions as a balancing receptor. When the computer rotates, the mouse clicks and releases by the changes in gravity.

[via Cecil Moss on Rhizome]

Subway ventilation bag art

Taking a cue from Marilyn Monroe's famous subway grate scene in The Seven Year Itch...... Artist Joshua Allen Harris creates street art by tying plastic bag animals to subway ventilation grates.










[via Make]

Jan Vormann's new work

Jan Vormann (who I posted about earlier here) has some new, kinetic work on his website.

The Simple Suicidal Systems are mechanisms that perform actions that will eventually lead to their destruction.

Rat
Motor (90 degree movement), razorblade, plexiglass, wood and cage

Fox
Motor (circular revolution), metal-saw, plexiglas, wood and cage

Parrot
Motor (90 degree movement), steel-sphere, plexiglass, wood and cage

Kinetic Sculpture

The Guggenheim... uh, I mean the BMW museum in Munich recently opened.

Included in their collection is a kinetic sculpture made from 714 metal balls.


See the sculpture in action (and listen to telephone hold muzak):



[via Make]

Tim Prentice

Tim Prentice is an amazing sculptor in the spirit of George Rickey. He says he steps out of the way and turns the art over the air and let it make the design decisions. The results are beautiful.

Be sure to check out his website... his home page video of his Cilli Opener is particularly striking.





[via Make]

Creepy robotic water snake

ACM-R5 is equipped with paddles and passive wheels around the body. To generate propulsive force by undulation, the robot need a resistance property as it glides freely in tangential direction but cannot in normal direction. Due to the paddles and passive wheels, ACM-R5 obtains that character both in water and on ground.

The control system of ACM-R5 is an advanced one. Each joint unit has CPU, battery, motors, so they can operate independently. Through communication lines each unit exchanges signals and automatically recognizes its number from the head, and how many units join the system. Thanks to this system operators can remove, add, and exchange units freely and they can operate ACM-R5 flexibly according to situations.

[via jwz by way of Make]

Meridith Pingree

Meridith Pingree makes cool kinetic sculptures.

Rube Goldberg chocolate crusher

This Rube Goldberg-like device seems unnecessarily abusive to chocolate, but it is cool.



And if you're not already familiar with Fischli & Weiss's The Way Things Go, check out this earlier post.

[via BoingBoing]

The Way Things Go

My earlier mention of art being co-opted for commercials made me think about the Honda's Cog commercial that borrowed heavily from Peter Fischli & David Weiss's Der Lauf der Dinge (The Way Things Go) (1987).

Here's an excerpt from Fischli & Weiss's 30 minute film:


And here's the car commercial which, according to Snopes, took 606 takes (and 6 million dollars) to make:

Yukinori Yanagi's flags

I'm heading out to vote in Super-duper Tuesday's primary and am feeling a bit political... so today's posting are about Yukinori Yanagi's ant farm flags. Above is The World Flag Ant Farm (1990) which consists of 170 ant farms, each of which has its sand in the configuration of a nation's flag. Over the course of the exhibition, the ants shift the sand around and build a nest.

This Japanese flag is from Asia-Pacific Ant Farm (1990) in which provides the ants a tube pathway between the flags of Asian-Pacific countries.


This last image is Studies in American Art: Three Flags (2000). I imagine most of my readers recognize the homage to Jasper Johns's Three Flags.

Theo Jansen's incredible machines

Theo Jansen's website

Derivations

Last summer Artbash, a New Zealand art blog, had a posting about the similarity between Rama Port's "Pull" (2007) and Mona Hatoum's "Pull" (1995). Hatoum version is on top and Port's second.
















My comment on the posting was this:

The reactions of the various parties (artist, director, academic) has a "circle the wagons" defensive feel. I don't think it's reasonable to expect even an art-educated person to catch the reference and it is pretty standard for artists to include "after X" when referencing even much more well-known and seminal works (e.g., Sherrie Levine's "Fountain after Marcel Duchamp"). Since Port has already renamed the work once (from "Hair Pull" to "Pull"), it seems reasonable for her to rename it again, acknowledging the borrowing.

This next thought comes with the caveat that I haven't seen either work in person, so I may be off base.

One thing that strikes me is that Hatoum's piece is richer in terms of content [what appears to be a monitor is Hatoum herself, so unbeknownst to the gallery-goer, pulling the braid actually pulls Hatoum's hair]. If Hatoum was the artist doing the appropriating, I would think, "Hmm... well she has really taken it to another level with the performative aspect and the exploration of simulation vs. reality." Port's version doesn't seem to add anything, but rather lessen it and not take it anywhere new.

So imagine my surprise when I was flipping through the Tinguely Museum's catalog for "Bewegliche Teile: Formen des Kinetischen" ("Moving Parts: Forms of the Kinetic") and I came across Günther Uecker's "Sandspirale" (1970). It has a very striking similarity to Hatoum's "+ and -" (1994). Uecker sculpture is on top and Hatoum's second (you can click on the images to see a larger version).

Hatoum's "+ and -" is a gallery-sized version of her tabletop "Self-Erasing Drawing" (1979). Hatoum and Uecker are both well enough known artists that I'm sure I'm not the first to notice this, so there's probably nothing amiss. I am curious, though, what is the relationship between the two artworks. Does Hatoum acknowledge Uecker's influence on her sculpture? Have they ever discussed it? Does she recall seeing "Sandspirale" before creating "+ and -"?

The sculptures have their differences... Uecker's chains cause more organic and meandering lines, whereas Hatoum's sculpture includes the concept of endless erasing. Still, the similarities are more striking than the differences.

My position on originality is that it's over-rated... anything worth doing is worth doing more than once. If an idea is so fragile it loses its specialness upon being explored more than once, then it really is just a shallow novelty. That being said, I'd be pretty uncomfortable if I were the maker of "+ and -." At the very least, I'd want to acknowledge Uecker in the title (unless there's some understanding with him to the contrary) and would seriously consider scrapping my version altogether simply to avoid the appearance of plagiarism.