Theo Jansen

[morsla]

From http://www.strandbeest.com/, discovered via anachrotech.

Theo Jansen, artist, studied science at the University of Delft Holland. The first seven years being a artist he just made paintings. Then he starts a project with a big flying saucer, which could really fly. It flew over the town of Delft in 1980 and brought the people in the street and the police in commotion. Since about ten years he is occupied with the making of a new nature. Not pollen or seeds but plastic yellow tubes are used as the basic matierial of this new nature. He makes skeletons which are able to walk on the wind. Eventually he wants to put these animals out in herds on the beaches, so they will live their own lives.

I want to live in a world where herds of wind-powered creatures wander the sands. Maybe there is hope for the future, after all...

Look at Theo's site for more information - especially his pictures and movies.

Comments

[hespa.livejournal.com]

...wow. I am in awe. I looked at the still pictures first and thought it was intriguing, in a very surreal artistic kind of way. But then I watched the movies and the way they move! It's incredibly natural, like watching a many-legged, skeletal horse or dog walking.

Still, I couldn't help but feel a pang when you said Maybe there is hope for the future, after all... Sure, those are amazing, beautiful beings, but I'd still rather share my future with graceful spoonbills and nimble oystercatchers...

[morsla.livejournal.com]

Oh, I have no problem with the spoonbills either :)

I just can't help but think the world would be better off after we humans have blown ourselves to pieces, so that the birds and wind-powered automatons can live out their days in peace.

[virtual-munkee.livejournal.com]

what about the beetles! and other insects! they surely deserve a place on this earth, constantly caring for the bottom end of our ecosystems. and cleaning up our bacterial and biological messes. plus, the birds need to eat something :P

[harkon.livejournal.com]

Well, wind powered-automatons. Birds can be pretty viscous.

[aeduna.livejournal.com]

*can't stop giggling* I hate it when my budgie slowly dribbles everywhere.... I think you mean vicious :)

[harkon.livejournal.com]

I guess the ones that aren't vicious are viscous in a manner that is problematic in the cruel automaton-eat-bird world of the post-apocalyptic future...

[hespa.livejournal.com]

**loses it**

**recovers**'

**reads aeduna's response and loses it again**

Oh dear...

[virtual-munkee.livejournal.com]

oh thats coollllllllll

i just finished reading Otherland by Tad Williams, loved the idea of a new form of life being made up of energy and light and information,..This shows that there are possibilities for life we havent thought of, and really changes the notion of What IS Life?? etc...