Kinetic Creatures

Herd your own laser-cut cardboard mechanical menagerie

Using the same tab-and-slot construction technique as classic balsa wood airplanes, Kinetic Creatures start as flat-packed, laser-cut cardboard and transform into the impressive mechanical Rory the Rhino, Geno the Giraffe or Elly the Elephant. The DIY animals were conceived by Portland, Oregon-based visual arts teacher Alyssa Hamel and industrial designer Lucas Ainsworth, who were interested in encouraging youth to "be builders, thinkers and inventors". After four years of research and design, the duo are launching a Kickstarter campaign today with the goal of raising enough funds to make the project possible while keeping the production local and sustainable.

As a project with educational roots, Kinetic Creatures require hand assembly and move by either a hand-cranked wire handle or an optional electric gear kit. The intuitively-assembled kit consists of little more than laser-cut wooden gears and a battery-operated on/off switch that fits in the open back of each animal, showing off all the moving parts for a basic lesson in mechanics.

To learn more about the project or to support this clever blend of art and science head to the Kinetic Creatures' Kickstarter. At this point donations are the only route to getting your own animal, so for $30 you can score your own Elly the Elephant or Rory the Rhino, while $40 buys Geno the Giraffe and $90 or more gets you all three critters for your own moving menagerie.

Sculpting Sound

The Swiss artist Zimoun is exhibiting his organic sound installations in a solo show in Florida’s Ringling Museum of Art. The mechanical devices which create soundscapes are presented in a series of repetitive models.

Zimoun blends elements of sound, sculpture, mechanics, and engineering into these sensory experiences which challenge the more typical views of sculpture and sonar performance. The mechanised, structural works are installed in an industrial-like warehouse space that juxtaposes the ‘organic’ sound models with the physical ‘artificial’ environment of its setting.

Zimoun creates the sound sculptures from simple components and basic mechanics, such as mini motors, ping pong balls, cardboard boxes and wires. He explores the physical representation of sound by forming multiples of repeated mechanical elements to examine the creation and degeneration of patterns. This will be the first showing of Zimoun’s work in Florida and one of the few showings of his work in the United States.

kinetic sculpture

Here I created a kinetic sculpture. It’s basically a tetrahedron which is able to transform itself into an other tetrahedron by transforming its vertexes into sides and its sides into vertexes.

This transformation has a midle state which is about a cube. The new vertexes grow from the very center of the sides so it creates a random movements on the floor. As the new vertexis are growing they elevates the object but its balance is unstable so it is going to tilt in a random direction.

The sculpture moved by flexinol wires – because of its low weight and because it doesn’t alter the view.During the project we created a modell vith two servos. It s not so nice as it was with flexinol wires, but we could check the movement.
Inside the object I wanted to place a lightsource which can redefine the space by its slowly moving shadows and can work as a moodlight. The light inside the object can modify the space around us.