Theo Jansen não deve ser novidade para vocês…

O cara faz umas esculturas “vivas” sensacionais.

São “kinetic scultures”. Parece que são motorizadas mas não, são movidas por forças naturais, como o vento.

A novidade é que ontem vi este vídeo. Um “Theo Jansen” de papel!

I am a Christian with many highly-overthought theological opinions.  I am also something of a scientific researcher through my day job.  And I believe in the likely existence of something that is recognizably life outside our planet.  None of this is in contradiction.

As I’ve written before, defining life is itself difficult.  I know that I’m alive, and I accept on a combination of faith and reason that my fellow men are also alive.  It seems only sensible to me to say that other animals are alive, especially with my modern worldview that says there is no intrinsic physical difference between us.  When I come to microorganisms, I have much less confidence in the proclamation, and with plants I’m flat-out skeptical.  What are the qualities of life?  Try to list them, and then watch this video of Theo Jansen’s beach creatures.  Are they alive?

Of course not.  Likewise, other structures exhibiting lifelike properties — whether engineered or not — are similarly dismissed.  Perhaps it is a certain holiness, a divine sanction, that separates life from the lifelike.  Or perhaps it is merely our delusion.

Some would put forward that certain well-characterized biological structures (DNA, etc) must be present for something to be considered life.  I see no reason for this arbitrary physical distinction.  In fact, I believe it is simply wrong.  Life as it has evolved on earth has centered around these structures, because it was through them that life in this self-contained system was realized.  There is no reason to believe this must be so in foreign systems (although there are reasonable arguments based on self-organization of their constituent atoms, but even that may not hold up in other regions of the universe).

So anyway, from a purely physical perspective, the case has been made many times by people smarter than me that life probably does exist out there.  I’m not completely convinced, especially because I’m still uncertain of what life is in a physical sense, but I’m reasonably enough persuaded to go along with it.

As a Christian, I believe that life on this planet is, regardless of the physical mechanisms by which it has been realized, created and sustained by an act of divine will.  I see nothing in that formula that insists life was only created at one time and in one place — in fact, it is created repeatedly, continually, in many places on earth.  Christians even believe in the creation and sustenance of unphysical lives in the angels and demons, and in the life of God Himself.  It’s all the same “life”.  What in this contradicts God’s creating life, or allowing/causing its physical forms to assemble, elsewhere?

I’m not the only one thinking about this and failing to find an argument against it.  The Vatican has also taken an interest in astrobiology.  The burden of argument is on those who say extraterrestrial life is impossible, and, until they may convince me theologically, I’m not jumping ship.

“The Walls between Arts and Engineering exist only in our minds”

Theo Jansen bezeichnet sich als Kinetic Sculptor. Die von ihm entworfenen insektenhaften Figuren bewegen sich allein durch Windkraft vorwärts. Ansehen und staunen:

Entdeckt auf Designcollector TV

Quince años lleva el holandés Theo Jansen dedicando su tiempo a crear nuevas formas de vida. Los llama Strandbeest (bestias de la playa) y parecen tan sumamente reales que resulta inquietante verlas caminar por la playa, como inmensos insectos o algún tipo de animal prehistórico.

Pero de lo más curioso resulta conocer que los materiales empleados son botellas de plástico, tubos flexibles o cinta adhesiva. Todo a partir de un inteligente diseño informático, no requieren de más que fuerza que el propio viento para moverse adelante y atrás en la playa.

Su sueño es que las criaturas finalmente cobren vida y evolucionen sin su intervención, continuando sus vidas como cualquier otro organismo.

¿Es el genio de un artista, o el arte de un ingeniero?

He sacado la información de AQUÍ donde hay muchas fotos que podéis disfrutar. Y gracias a Good Luck, os dejo con este video de Youtube.

This dude blows my mind.

Stunning animated works of Dutch artist, writer and kinetic sculptor Theo Jansen. Born in Hague, The Netherlands(1948), Jansen studied Physics at the University of Delft (The Netherlands 1968-1975), then left the university to become an artist and made paintings for the first 7 years.

Ancora by Theo Jansen / Photo by Loek van der Klis

Back in the 80’s, Jansen made a commotion in Delft when he built a flying saucer like object complete with 15 ft flashing lights and beeping sounds that flew over the town. He also built a light sensitive paint spray-gun.

Animals at the Beach by Theo Jansen / Photo by Loek van der Klis

In the beginning of the 90’s, Theo Jansen began to build enormous kinetic sculptures which resemble of gigantic skeletons of animals that able to walk using the wind-power on the beaches.

Palletbeest by Theo Jansen / Photo by Loek van der Klis

Jansen’s animated works are a fusion of art and engineering. He also says that “The walls between art and engineering exist only in our minds.”

Sabulosa by Theo Jansen / Photo by Loek van der Klis

More info and kinetic sculptures of Theo Jansen at strandbeest.com

Photographs by Loek van der Klis of loekvanderklis.com

Video [youtube]

Ecco le creazioni dell’olandese Theo Jansen, scultore cinetico. Ciò che rende possibile il movimento di queste creazioni è semplicemente la forza del vento. Le sue sculture sono state scelte da BMW per la comunicazione pubblicitaria.

At the Firehouse yesterday, I saw a video of Dutch artist Theo Jansen’s “kinetic sculptures,” which he calls Strandbeests.  They are basically made of PVC pipe and wire ties, and they are wind-powered, once you give them a push.  They are so beautiful.  Go see them!

Photo from Theo Jansen’s website.

No hay que realizar una introducción para esto, solo observar y sacar conclusiones artisticas “urgentemente”.

Mayor info en: http://www.strandbeest.es/strandbeest/inicio/
Fuente: TED

Supongo que algunos recordarán un post anterior sobre Theo Jansen publicado por Felipe Mingo. Theo se presenta al mundo como un holandés autonombrado escultor cinético y su trabajo ha alcanzado muchos rincones del mundo. Yo les quiero presentar a otro escultor cinético, uno más involucrado con la precisión del movimiento y la armonía con la que los materiales se acoplan. Reuben Margolin es matemático, físico, biólogo, diseñador y todo lo que se les ocurra. Ha tenido residencias en diversas universidades y centros artísticos alrededor del mundo, lo que le ha permitido abrir su campo de visión y estudiar de una forma más precisa el comportamiento del movimiento. Trabajando con diferentes materiales, creo que tanto Reuben como Theo han logrado darle un giro al concepto que se tenía de escultura, llevándolo al nivel en el que la obra se transforma y adopta una forma distinta de acuerdo al impulso que se le aplica. En lo personal, creo que los artistas del siglo 21 están llevando las artes directamente a experimentar con la relación que tiene el ser humano con los objetos estáticos, realizando un trabajo en el que los materiales representan el comportamiento biológico (automoción); encontrando en la experimentación de diferentes técnicas, el motor para la evolución del arte.

Build your own Strandbeest (as previously described here)

Spent yesterday with Justin and Eugenie. J is M’s baby brother, a musician and stage manager at the new Oslo opera house; E is a prima ballerina and will dance Giselle there this autumn. We were in our own mad little movie of this country’s cultural life for 12 hours…..

Started Saturday afternoon in St. Mary’s Church with a talk by Theo Jansen about his compulsion to make huge walking insect-like structures from lengths of plastic conduit tubes. He spoke, in front of the 14C Jesse window, about being their creator and his own speeded up process of intelligent design in choosing the elements that worked best.

Out into town and picked up tickets for Sunday – an evening of surrealist movie shorts, to be accompanied by electric cellist Bela Emerson, who J had seen in Oslo recently…..and over to Frank’s Bar for some taking the Michael-ly small portions of tapas. M got over-excited drawing a diagram of water irrigation systems in the Alpujarras and knocked his Red Stripe over my jeans, but I improvised with the hand drier in the loo….

First visit to the Theatre Severn, a triple bill….Arjen Mulder’s essay on how bacteria rule the world, Marcus Coates’ great little film shot in Shrewsbury – about our behaviour in the city and the noises we make in it – and the premier of Opera North’s Weather Men – a chamber opera – narrator, conductor, baritone and string quartet – describing the relationship between Fitzroy, a creationist, and Darwin, champion of natural selection…In the foyer during the interval, most of the ice cream eating species couldn’t work out how to open the new litter bins. Somebody should have filmed it.

Back out into our movie. We should have seen the spilt beer and Marcus Coates’ shots of naughty mooning boys as little clues. It was raining hard and we planned to drop into the Nag’s Head on the way down Wyle Cop. When we got there a police squad, still on the pavement with barking dog had just cleared out the front of the bar, excitingly leaving us with room to sit down. 

We stopped again at the pub down the road from our house. A big gang of blokes piled in after us, very shouty indeed. Eight women wandered around dressed as traffic wardens with pink uniforms, and one lady spent  a long time trying to persuade Tim to put his trousers back on. E said she had no idea Shrewsbury  was such an exciting place to live. We only caught a tiny bit of the Shift_Time festival but it was great.

Un Chien Andalou (Dali & Bunuel)

Along the beaches, creatures roam
Creatures large, and hallow-boned
Chattering legs from end to end
Hissing, digging, drinking wind

Women cry with lamentation
Children bury their faces deep
Men stand bewildered in frustration
As the loathsome creatures sleep

Lorna and I were invited to go to the Friday launch of the Shift Time Festival in Shrewsbury. A free bar (for a while at least) and the first performance of the festival ensured a good night so we picked up two friends and made our way there, slightly later than expected but time seems to be a concept that is slowly taking a back seat these days.

After our first beer we then sat down in an igloo type building and listened to the official opening speeches by Anna Douglas and Jon King, two of the main bods involved in the festival. Following that the first performance, entitled Low-Tech Songs with Servo Drive, started which was by Paul Granjon a French performance artist who essentially sings self penned songs about animals in the evolutionary chain. With a definite tongue in the cheek he sang about chicken feet and fish, each supported by a video being projected onto the wall behind him. He then progressed and wore a pair of robotic dog ears and a robotic tail whilst singing, He finished with him singing and being supported by a robot which played a small, purpose made synth. All very surreal but highly entertaining and a great start.

When  we returned to the bar the free drinks had ended…………boo!

As the light started to fade we all walked over to Umerus and watched a twilight demonstration. One of the local freelance press photographers was there to get some photos so a few of us helped him out by holding some LED lights to light the scene he had set up a little better, he was working with on-board flash as well and was still at 1/20 second exposure at f/3.5 not sure what the ISO was. I shot this not long after,  ISO-800 1/25 @ f/1.6. I liked the silhouette and thought it made a nice shot.

Wonderment

We left soon afterwards and I have been sworn to secrecy about the further beers, wine and kebabs which made a very pleasant end to the night!

We arrived at the Quarry the day afterwards feeling slightly worse for wear and as it was a beautiful day we took our dog Jack along for a walk. Our first visit was the installation of theRemembrance Path by two local artists, Wren and Ray. I talk a little bit about it in this post. Trying to get some different angles on the proceedings I got on my belly and after being jumped on by Jack I took this shot.

Wren places book number 2 down.

Bit of a lucky catch really, as I was lying there getting my angle how I wanted it, Wren, one of the artists, came along and placed the second book down and promptly apologised for ‘ruining my shot’……..couldn’t have been more wrong.

We then had a wander further into the Quarry and saw part of a performance by Blue Eyed Soul who perform aerial dances, this time dressed in Victorian costumes and with audio narration. I took a few snaps here but didn’t really get anything that I was particularly impressed with, I blew the highlights on this one.

Blue Eyed Soul

Trying to get some movement in the scene I swiched the camera to Av mode and set the aperture to f/22 and lowered the ISO right down to 50 which gave me a shutter of 1/30, plenty long enough to convey some sense of speed, luckily the girl on the right stayed fairly still which made for a nice contrast.

Swinging Around.

My wife, Lorna, who has also been blogging about this event has also been doing some of the video interviews for the Shift-Time website so I held Jack and took some photos of her whilst she interviewed Theo Jansen. It’s been a right old family affair hasn’t it, me photographing, Lorna interviewing. Other videos of Lorna doing her stuff here

Lorna Interviewing Theo Jansen

I had been looking forward to seeing the performance of Feng Ru Lee since I had first seen the festival programme so I was keen to make sure I was about when it started. As it happens, Lorna was carrying on with her interviewing duties and spoke with her before the performance so I had time for a complimentary burger.

After a while Feng Ru Lee appeared in her sheep costume and started her performance where she was penned in a small enclosure and mimicked the actions of a live sheep in another pen next to hers. From her website:

Counting Sheep is a series of performances that has turned an artist such as myself into the comic like character of a sheep. The sheep has appeared in many different situations and is interested in inspecting the changing landscape of the urban city. It references our post-human future and relates to self-marketing as an Artist product. Doubling myself / itself again and again like Dolly this clone has never died, but instead reinvents its self in new forms and manifestations. So many questions are waiting to be answered in the future. I am interested in testing the boundaries of social ethics and acceptable science, exploring the line drawn between where scientists cease to be humans and play at being god.

Possibly the most surreal performance I have ever seen and it certainly got the attention of many people passing by.

Photography wise it wasn’t an easy situation to get something a little different, so again I was trying to look for a slightly unusual angle to get the scene in. There were many others there taking photos at this point and some people were even setting tripods up to get their shots. I took a few ’straight’ shots bu they didn’t really do anything for me at all, either by content of composition so I started to angle the camera around and came up with this which sets the scene quite nicely I think.

Feng Ru Lee as Milee

I particularly wanted to get some nice portrait shots of her and had spoken to her about grabbing some time after her performance, however, I realised that if I got on my belly and poked my camera lens through the fence I was at a perfect angle to get what I wanted so I popped on my flashgun and waited for the time when she was in the right place. Difficult one this, her costume was bright white and the sky was starting to show signs of rain, varying between bright white and grey so I decided to use the fill flash to give me a bit of separation, expose her face correctly and underexpose the sky a touch. This has had a bit of extra work in post processing to exaggerate those points…….but not too much.

Feng Ru Lee

I was also interested to catch peoples reaction to the performance and I think this next photo sums up the general WTF?? expression on peoples faces.

A Definite WTF?? Moment.

So, that was about it for the first day of the festival, we saw some stuff that we hadn’t seen before, spoke to people we hadn’t spoken to before and heard things we hadn’t heard before and though some of it I didn’t really ‘get’ it was a great day out with some nice photo possibilities, even Jack enjoyed it.

Saturday 4th July was the first full day of the Festival of Ideas proper. When I got to the Quarry everyone was busy. Wren Miller had a team of volunteers sorting and laying out books along the laberinth marks she had laid out. Umerus was tetchily warming up, the sheep were in their pens and the Blue Eyed Soul’s performance of TAKE eagery awaited.

For every 10 metres I walked I seemed to bump into someone I knew and it was a very social affair. Later in the day I fell into serious conversation with a friend about the art and the audience, more of that later.

Wren Miller and Ray Jacob’s memory laberinth was well on the way and I think they must have laid most of the books by the time I left.

Wren Miller directs two volunteers, one of them my partner Rachel (right)

Rain disrupted progress a couple of times but covers were at the ready….

Theo Jansen’s Strandbeest Umerus was feeling tetchy, not  liking the grass and boards that had been provided and at one point he hurt his leg. We were woried by the cracking sound that Umerus had brocken  a leg but it was just a strain and Dr Theo put the beast right. The boards were sprayed with water which made Umerus feel closer to his Dutch beach and became a lot happier.

Theo Jansen explained that Umerus was a new evolution of the ideas he had been working on over the last 20 years. Umerus takes on water through a drinking tube and the action of the wind moving it’s giant fins creates high pressure in the soda bottles. This stored energy drives the beast’s legs creating a lively strandbeast scampering over the wet boards.

Umerus stretches his legs.

Feng Ru Lee was performing with two  sheep supplied by my fellow  Shift Time blogger Gekkko. Feng Ru Lee was performing as her alter ego Millee the sheep and following the actions of one of the penned sheep. It was bizzar street (quarry) theatre causing much discussion and smiles. It was also the starting point of my friends discussion with me about art and audience (more of that later).

"In This Mountain Where The Sun Shines Through"

The highlight of the day for me was Blue Eyed Soul’s TAKE: a dance in the park. The dance was set against a tape of collected memories and each act reflected these emerging story lines. The dancers used the airial equipment with dexterity and beauty, some of the arial acrobatics drawing gasps and whoo’s from the crowd behind me. Congratulations Blue Eyed Soul superb as ever.

There are plenty more photos on my flickr page.

Now to the final part of the day when I bought myself a drink ready to wind down before going home. I bump into a near neighbour and we strike up conversation about the merits of Milee the sheep. He asks whether this art is accessible to the Shrewsbury public? I argued yes because it was alongside many other festival attractions that draw people in, like Umerus and TAKE, its not the only thing on offer and people can take it or leave it – people have enjoyed it and asked questions about it.

But then he hit on the serious point – where is the audience? We looked around – for a festival of this scale – beer tents and all – where was everyone? Then the very serious point about where was the new Shropshire Council’s coherent and consistent events marketing strategy. Who is responsible and who takes it seriously? Who talks to the local papers on a regular and consistent basis so events are fully featured? – why isn’t whats on information fed into a one stop highly publicised web portal? And it went on. No one is saying its easy but my experience of mentioning Shift Time is a response of “whats that”? My friends experience of working with the council is there isn’t a consistent and coherent approach to marketing events – there needs to be if a mass arts audience is to be developed in Shropshire.

Let’s hope word of mouth spreads the Shift Time news and people flock to events tomorrow and next week.

Shift Time is open – it is official – Anna Douglas and Jon King launched it last night with a rousing call and backed up with articles in the Independent and Guardian calling it the biggest arts festival in Britain.

Anna thanked a host of key organisers  and spread anticipation about the events that will happen today.

I took some photographs of thins that were happening in the Quarry.

Blue Eyed Soul construstion goes up.

There was a ballon launch too!

We were trated to an off the wall prformance consisting of bad singing, hand made guitar, robotic ears, tails, cardboard box evolution challenge, just plain robots and video. Oh I forget set design lighting and live video link.

Paul Granjon’s robot does a flip getting up…

Paul Granjon palys his hand made guitar, sings in French, with robotic ears on.

His robot plays the keyboard.

As the dusk appeared Theo Janson enthralled a crowd with Umerus awakening fron its slumber to march across the boards. Theo said that it was a massive beast with lots of new ideas  that will evolve when new srandbeests are born. People were enchanted playing with Theo’s little beast – a puppy of a ‘machine’ that has to be seen to be believed.

Let the festival begin……

A phone call out of the blue yesterday saw me being asked to go and take some photographs of Theo Jansen in the Quarry in Shrewsbury for the Shift-Time Festival’s PR agency, my very first ‘proper job’ so the pressure was on to produce what they wanted.

Theo arrived in the country the day before so that he could unpack, set up and test his creation, Umerus. A quite amazing feat of engineering that sees the 13 metre ‘Strandbeest’ fluidly walk with wind assistance. Earlier tests on a beach in Holland were thwarted when the wind was simply too strong, so a beautifully hot and sunny day was perfect for the day’s testing. Officially, the photo shoot was today (Friday) but having heard the poor weather forecast I decided to go up and meet Theo and get some photographs ‘in the bag’ just in case I was presented with torrential rain. So, Lorna and I hot footed it up to Shrewsbury and went to meet Theo. When we arrived he was due to be speaking to BBC Radio Shropshire so we hung back and took the time too have a close up look at Umerus and have a chat to his co-workers, it also gave me the opportunity to get my camera ready.

Theo Jansen Talks to the BBC

All seemed fine until I turned on the camera and then it very quickly occurred to me that I had forgotten to bring a memory card…….what a base error to make, maybe thats why I am an amateur Luckily, a friend was there too and very kindly lent me a card. Panic over I did a quick scout around looking at the light and the environment and trying to get a feel for the kind of shot I wanted.

When Theo had finished I introduced myself and explained why I was there a day early. What a nice friendly chap Theo is, very warm and soft but in a frame that excudes authority. Within minutes he was posing for me with utter patience as I manouvered Lorna around the scene with the off camera flash. My feeling for the photo was to have quite a dramatic shot with Theo posed with a ’smug’ impression. I asked him to fold his arms, look right into the camera and say mentally ‘I made this!’

Theo Jansen and Umerus

I used a circular polariser to give the rich and vibrant sky, off camera flash camera right (held about head height by my wife) to fill in the shadow areas a touch. This was the best of the day for me despite the car in the background! Another of my favorites is this shot which shows some of the detail of Umerus against the beautifully blue sky.

Umerus Detail

This morning on the ‘official’ photoshoot the weather delivered as promised and though it wasn’t torrentail rain, it was raining pretty consistently. The skies were varying between dark and light so I knew I had a bit of a job on to balance the exposures. I arrived at the park at 10.30 and just after that I met the contact I had from the PR agency. We had a chat about what kind of shots she wanted, angles, subjects etc and then decided that to get anything decent we needed Umerus to be off its temporary wooden floor and on the grass. Having met and photographed Theo the day before I had no qualms about asking him to get Unerus on the grass. As I expected he obliged without question so I certainly think my previous visit paid dividends.

Walking Umerus onto the grass

We had decided that a few photographs of Umerus with children would give the creation some scale, so as some willing parents and children were rounded up I thought about angles, light and those damn clouds that were varying in brightness by the second. Soon enough a willing parent arrived with his three children so I set the following shot up with the child looking up at Umerus. This was lit with the diffused flash camera left pointed at the subject.

Childs Play?

I really wanted to get Theo in front of Umerus again but this time with more of the ‘Strandbeest’ showing than in the previous photo above. So after clearing another photographer out of the way and positioning Theo I was quite happy to hear Theo ask if I wanted him to do the ’smug pose’ again. This was music to my ears as  I knew that he knew precisely what I wanted.

Theo and Umerus

I took around 70 photos over the two days and selected only the ones that I felt had compositional impact, good light and good colours.

Despite my initial nerves on doing something ‘officially’ for the first time I soon settled down and got on with the job in hand, I struggled a bit with some of the shots that I wanted to get but this was probably more down to my inexperience in this kind of photography than anything else. There was a point where it was suggested that we have a couple of dogs in the picture but I poo pooed that idea fairly quickly, difficult enough working with kids without introducing animals into the equation.

Nerve wracking, stressful and highly enjoyable and I think that I managed to get some decent photos out of the sessions, I’ll wait and see if any get used in the papers this weekend……..keep your eyes peeled!

I arrived at The Quarry, Shrewsbury mid-morning to find the container truck already parked up by the river and the hard standing being prepared on which it is hoped that Theo Jansen’s latest kinetic sculpture Animalis umerus will walk powered by the wind and backed up by a bank of 2-litre bottles filled with compressed air and incorporated into the structure. Last week’s trials on the beach at Den Haag, Holland were frustrated by the wind. Today the sun shone and a light sporadic breeze could be felt…Theo thought the trees might prove to be a problem: a different environment from the flat beach.

I spoke at length to the technicians accompanying Jansen who were deftly repairing minor disconnections and damage to the five part structure which had occurred as it was removed from the beach.
The adaptability of the plastic electric conduit used for the structure to bending, stretching, flattening and even to being tied in knots was surprising. It is believed that the product has around a ten year life in UV light, and Jansen is adept at reusing and recycling materials from previous animalis models.

The sections of the structure were reassembled with no problems, but testing was thwarted late in the afternoon due to an incompatibility between the European plug on the air compressor and the available adaptors. Frustrating as the Midlands Today television crew were expected early in the morning and rain predicted. Even more worrying was how the assembled hard standing would cope with the predicted variable weather.

I had heard tweets that Umerus was amongst us so on returning from work in Oswestry I walked with Rachel along the river to have a look…

This was my first glimps. We crossed the bridge and entered the Quarry to get a closer look – what are the boards like? Will Umerus be home sick? Umerus and Little Beast were home alone. I assured them they were safe in Shrewsbury and they settled back down to wait for their master. We inspected the boards….

We then had a drink at the Nags Head…

Enjoyed the view – got a take away and came home back to Shift Time blogging.

I can’t wait to see Umerus walking!!!

Engineer/artist Theo Jansen arrived from Holland with two of his Strandbeests today. Here he is inspecting the surface being laid down for the walking sculptures.

Watched by a tense Jon King, Festival Manager, Theo unlocks the big orange container.

A first glimps of the tightly-packed Strandbeests.

They’ve arrived safely!

The small Beest was first out of the container, and proved quite happy to walk on the grass of the Quarry Park

Umerus travelled in several sections. Here Theo guides the second of them out into the sunshine.

When I left the park, Umerus was being carefully put together. I’m really looking forward to seeing it in action on Saturday 4th July, and to Theo’s talk in St Mary’s Church on the afternoon of 11th July.