Anyhoo, Theo Jansen builds wind-powered sand creatures. We've discussed early, non-digital computers, so I think I can include these beesties on my blog.
A few thoughts:
1. They are amazingly beautiful. It has to do with being able to see the mechanics of their skeletons; they move as fluidly as biological organisms but look like machines. I like being able to see the complex series of physical algorithms that must be executed in order to achieve motion.
2. Jansen refers to them as animals and hopes that one day they will be able to "live" on their own on the beach. He's constructed ones that can detect when they hit water, and reverse motion, and ones that detect when a storm is coming and peg themselves to the ground.
3. This makes me think about a different sort of participatory art. Not art that people participate in, but art that participates. You know? We've talked a little bit about artificial intelligence, and Grosser presented to us his painting machine that arguable has its own creative agency. I think Jansen's sand animals bring up a similar idea, that of the machine as thinking organism. Living art. Only with these, they would potentially exist as a community, a herd on the beach. Maybe they could even be designed to make art of their own? Sand sculptures?
4. Of course what sets these apart is that they are powered solely by the wind. So the source of creative agency is the earth itself, in a much more direct way than usual.
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