The Exploratorium Tinkering Studio invites all of you to join a Google Hangout this Friday, November 21stย from 9am to 10:30amย (Pacific time) to talk about one of their true specialtiesโAutomata!โwith some of their favorite masters of this art/technology. Joiningย the Tinkering Studio team will be a star-studded group: Artist Keith Newstead (whose pieces are at the top […]
German maker Christopher Blasius sent us the link to his wonderful projects that use some easy-to-build mechanisms to run whimsical clockwork toys.
Check out this tiny marble machine.
This fantastic automaton created by Keith Newstead shows a gardener watering a large killer tomato, and just barely getting snapped up the plant’s jaws. Keith built this colorful and charming machine as a donations box for Occombe Farm in Devon, UK.
A peek inside the mind and workshop of automata artist Dug North.
The nameplate in the video attributes Steampunk Voyager to Forrest Burnett, who otherwise seems to be a bit of a ghost, online. I’m not even sure this video was posted under his YouTube account, since there is different user forrestburnett with a channel that seems to be documenting original kinetic sculptures.
Others have remarked about the serene beauty of a complex mechanism precisely engineered to perform a single task, that would be simple for a person, just for the purpose of delighting its operator and/or audience. Witness Air Sculpture, by Japanese automatist Kazu Harada, case in point.
