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Tramps like Theo Jansen

...baby we were born to run? A perennial favorite at RISD, Theo Jansen, is featured on the NPR website, complete with a video I hadn't seen. Will Holland's coastline eventually be overrun by walking timber and cloth beasts, the Dutch government scrambling to dry out more plodder to appease their new timber-vector overlords?

Only time will tell.

 
Oct 10, 07 6:48 am

This guy's work blows my mind.
It's like necromancy meets sculpture + autonomon meets amazing!
I would love to see herds of these pieces roaming through the countryside.
With both carnivores and herbivores represented....
The natural cycle of life but by animate but non-living....

Oct 10, 07 9:41 am  · 
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What,
no one thinks this guys stuff is interesting?

Oct 11, 07 8:21 am  · 
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first time i saw this i thought it was sublime, both in the conception and realization. i sent links to everybody with my exclamatory remarks about it.

after the first feelings of amazement, however, i'm not satisfied by just the technical artistry and the beauty. for it to stick with me, i want to understand its value, what it can do to solve something or make something happen.

before you pick on this reaction, i KNOW that this is not the job of art, but this particular art doesn't have the staying power for me without that added dimension. i expect something different from it that i might expect from a sculpture, partly because it seems to promise something different.

so... intriguing but to what end?

Oct 11, 07 8:46 am  · 
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brian buchalski

nice toys

Oct 11, 07 8:51 am  · 
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won and done williams

it's cool to see his sculptures "in action." the video does a lot more for the work than stills. i think it's fascinating, but as art it just seems a little eccentric, kinda like andy goldsworthy.

Oct 11, 07 9:23 am  · 
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Apurimac

that is fucking impressive.

Oct 11, 07 9:35 am  · 
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@ Steven Ward....
I can appreciate the position...
Yes to what end...
I think his work has many wonderful possibilities....
At it's most basic i suppose it is simply a "toy" of some sort

As for what it could provide, teach us etc...
It's definetly ambiguous...
But isn't all "art"? Which is very often simply intellectually described/created toys, most often
IMO

Oct 11, 07 10:07 am  · 
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The reenactionary aspect of the process/work--"emulate natural selection"--are expertly represented. Is terrestrial locomotion really then a 'trickle-down effect' of increasingly larger global and cosmic motions? Is life itself some almost inexplicably autonomous interface/machine between terrestrial and cosmic forces (initiated by a big bang)?

[Makes me wonder how one might go about designing a 'beast' that interfaces the act of visual perception.]

OR

Are Sand Beasts like a well crafted publicity machine? Produce a work and then get some publicity wind behind it and watch it go (on forever?).

"So what does it do?"
"Why it generates publicity, of course!"

Oct 11, 07 11:17 am  · 
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FRO

SW- I met a 7 year old last week who had never seen a car with window cranks on the doors. Maybe that generation can benefit from seeing these massive amazing kinetic beasts walking down the beach without the aid of fossil fuels of computer chips.

Oct 11, 07 11:38 am  · 
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Liebchen

"Why it generates publicity, of course" and BMW commercials, of course.

Oct 11, 07 1:03 pm  · 
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SDR

What is Jansen's association with RISD ? [And why does he vary the pronunciation of his own first name ?]

Oct 11, 07 1:39 pm  · 
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oldenvirginia

While in an artwork/kinetics/architecture direction, it's also worth looking at La Machine, the French company who make huge kinetic machines. Made to look and behave like animals, they are described as 'architecture/urbanism in motion'. They lectured at the Bartlett yesterday, in fact.

Here's a short youtube clip of their elephant in motion:

Here

Oct 11, 07 1:56 pm  · 
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cadalyst

this guy is the new albert einstein, fascinating work

Oct 11, 07 2:53 pm  · 
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cadalyst

this guy is the new albert einstein, fascinating work

Oct 11, 07 2:53 pm  · 
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^^ time warp?

Oct 11, 07 10:36 pm  · 
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snooker

theo was vincents brother.....sigh!

Oct 11, 07 11:23 pm  · 
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Liebchen

SDR- There is no obvious RISD/Jansen connection. We had a foundation studio in which explores tectonic systems and material potential through models made of sticks, wire, then surfaces...invariably, someone "discovers" Theo Jansen and makes obvious parallels with the work of the studio.

Theo van Gogh was also the great-grandson film-maker of the painter who was murdered.

Oct 12, 07 3:07 pm  · 
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Liebchen

And vincent's brother.

Oct 12, 07 3:24 pm  · 
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SDR

Thanks, Liebchen. I was there too long ago; our foundation studios ignored the tectonic/kinetic, I'm afraid -- though I was making mobiles for my own amusement !

I saw this guy's work (though didn't pick up his name) a couple of years ago, when the work was hand-propelled. These larger self-propelled pieces are scary ! Does he get them into a truck, or assemble them on the beach ? Ane whart happens when one walks into the ocean ?!

Oct 12, 07 3:25 pm  · 
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SDR

And what

Oct 12, 07 3:29 pm  · 
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