Fledgling is an avian kinetic sculpture designed and built by Christian Ristow. Participants at Maker Faire Bay Area 2011 climb up the spine of a metal bird that is anatomically similar to an eagle, then sit in its head where they can pedal furiously in order to slowly move the bird’s wings in mimicry of flight.
Jeremy Mayer’s typewriter assemblages are sculptural pieces made purely from typewriter parts. In a process he calls “reassemblage”, Mayer fits the pieces together into likenesses of living creatures using no welds, glue, solder, or external parts. He taks about and shoe his work at Maker Faire Bay Area 2011.
The day before Maker Faire Bay Area opened, we ran into Kurt and Bobbi Pires putting the finishing touches on a unique quadricycle in the South Lot of the fairgrounds. Dubbed Opabinia Regalis, the vehicle is named after an extinct Precambrian creature and has now been reborn as an angry, fire-spewing art bike.
During Maker Faire Bay Area 2011, we caught up with Lindsy Lawlor, creator of one of the most popular attractions at the Faire– Russell the electric giraffe. With the help of his English programmer, also named Russell, the rolling, walking, talking giraffe bot gets better every year with new sounds, touch sensors, and lights.
Brett Levine has been fascinated by fire since he was a boy, coming close to setting his house on fire several times during his learning process. His latest creation, the DIY Flame Tree, is a freeform construction of copper tubing with gaseous vents that can be lit for visual effect. Maker Faire Bay Area 2011 participants were invited to created their own additions to the work and then stand behind the fence to watch the pyrotechnic results of their labors.
Zachary Coffin‘s Colossus is a large-scale sculpture of wood and steel that holds massive granite rocks suspended above the ground. Ropes hanging from the rocks are pulled by attendees of Maker Faire Bay Area 2011, setting the entire seventy foot tall structure slowly spinning with great inertia.
Big news! Maker Faire has its own channel on YouTube. We’re publishing videos from our 2011 Bay Area and Detroit Maker Faires regularly over the next few months. We’re extremely excited and proud to share these maker profiles with you, so if you want to keep up to date on the latest, be sure to subscribe on YouTube.
