Lucea: kinetic sculpture by artist Anthony Howe

Mechnical sound works from commonplace industrial objects

"The sound sculptures and installations of Zimoun are graceful, mechanized works of playful poetry, their structural simplicity opens like an industrial bloom to reveal a complex and intricate series of relationships, an ongoing interplay between the 'artificial' and the 'organic'. It's an artistic research of simple and elegant systems to generate and study complex behaviors in sound and motion. Zimoun creates sound pieces from basic components, often using multiples of the same prepared mechanical elements to examine the creation and degeneration of patterns."

(Statements about Zimoun: Tim Beck http://www.zimoun.net/about.html)

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Jean Tinguely: Art, Machines and Motion

"Jean Tinguely exhibited in a show titled 'Art, Machines and Motion' at the Kaplan Gallery, London, in November 1959. In conjunction with that exhibition, Tinguely held a conference and performance at the Institute of Contemporary Art on November 16 titled 'Static, Static, Static! Be Static!' During the event, 1.5 km of paper drawn by two cyclists on his meta–matic bicycle were spread through the audience while Tinguely read his theory of movement and machines simultaneously heard on radio in Paris."

(Rosemary O'Neill, p.159)

Rosemary O'Neill (2011). Total Art and Fluxus in Nice. "Art and Visual Culture on the French Riviera, 1956–1971: The Ecole De Nice", Ashgate Publishing Limited.

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Theo Jansen's Strandbeest Evolution

Motive Architecture: spaces which engage social interaction

"Architecture traditionally has been considered the spatial backdrop to social interaction. But increasingly architects enabled by computational technologies are creating spaces that can engage actively within these social interactions. My research focuses on the non verbal aspects of human computer interaction, embedding kinetic behaviours into physical objects. ...

While increasing numbers of designers are using robotic systems to build novel performative objects and spaces, there is little discourse in design on what forms of motion are most engaging and why? I am exploring how, and when, we percieve animism and causality in moving objects as I hypothesise that the most salient of motions are those which give a subjective impression that something is alive. My research examines the minimal amount of motion required to elicit immediate and seemingly irresistible interpretations of life gaining inspiration from the perceptual research of Michotte (1946), Heider and Simmel (1944), and Tremoulet and Feldmann (2006). A test rig for suspending and animating simple geometric figures has been developed to test methods of eliciting anima. Computer vision systems have been developed in parallel to observe human levels of engagement and to explore novel forms of exchange between architecture and inhabitant."

(Ruairi Glynn)

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