PopTech

vimeo:

Theo Jansen by Salazar

Theo Jansen may not refer to himself as an artist, but the genius kenetic sculptures that bloom from his hands beg to differ.

Beautiful new video of the magnificent work of Theo Jansen (PopTech 2005).

Everyone’s attracted to balloons. Your hair is attracted—when I work on balloons in the studio everything wants to attract to them, they have so much static attraction. On some level they have that effect on people, the way that they are compelled. When I use them, they are warm and inviting and people want to imagine themselves in there. And so if I can capture people’s imagination for just long enough and just stop them for a minute from the daily routine and just think about nothing except for the potential for discovery.

— Jason Hackenwerth on why he builds with balloons.

Go behind the scenes of the making, moving and installing of Bang Bang Boom a temporary balloon sculpture created for PopTech 2012 by Jason Hackenwerth.

Photographs of The Yellow River by Zhang Kechun (via everythinginthesky)

Jason Hackenwerth installation for PopTech 2012 Iceland (by briansuda)

The incredible, 80,000 square foot Nature Research Center opened just a couple of weeks ago at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh, NC. While its on our list of places we’d like to visit sometime soon, we got a sneak peak inside the exhibition with this video, Patterned by Nature. The sculpture, which is 10 feet wide, 90 feet long, made from 3,600 tiles of LCD glass and and runs on less power than a laptop, wends its way through the museum’s five stories. As Sosolimited, the exhibition designers, explained:

The content cycles through twenty programs, ranging from clouds to rain drops to colonies of bacteria to flocking birds to geese to cuttlefish skin to pulsating black holes. The animations were created through a combination of algorithmic software modeling of natural phenomena and compositing of actual footage.

If you’ve visited the new Research Center, let us know how it is!

mirandamolina:

In the left, the original Jansen’s mechanism with it’s walking curve, and in the right, a simplified version.

A la izquierda, el mecanismo original de Jansen y su “curva de caminata”, y a la derecha una versión simplificada.

(vía Geometría Dinámica » El mecanismo de Jansen)

Blending the line between art and engineering, Theo Jansen (PopTech 2005), a Dutch visual artist creates “life” in the form of “animals” that walk the beach in the Netherlands.

shapeways:

The 3D Printed Strandbeest Takes Wind Power and Walks (Video))

utnereader:

Making A Panterragaffe (A What? And Why?): Based on Theo Jansen‘s Kinetic art, Panterragaffe is a pedal powered two person walking machine, a walking bicycle. The name has a few elements to it. It’s a play on pantograph, which is a mechanism for copying drawings, since it’s similar to the leg mechanism. Also; Pan – all or spanning. Terra – earth. Gaffe – an unintentional act causing embarrassment to it’s originator or just goofiness. A bit of goofiness for everybody. To most people the name doesn’t mean anything, therefore its meaning is flexible. (via MAKE)

laughingsquid:

Custos Cavum, A Beautiful Skeletal Kinetic Sculpture That Breathes