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Theo Jansen is a Dutch artist who does Rube Goldberg one better. While Goldberg’s creations were spectacularly clever and astoundingly useless, they were very much artifices: without a human creating them, they wouldn’t exist. Your typical Rube Goldberg device fairly screams “I was created by a human!”
Jansen’s artwork is just as kinetic, and just as spectacular, but it seems almost organic. The “Strandbeests” (beach creatures) he creates are just as artificial, but they move the way organic creatures move, and thanks to clever sail structures, they are self-powered; there are no electric motors hidden away to make them move.
Definitely worth a look.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/09/beach-creatures.html
