Strandbeestens make me nervous.
Ever since I saw the first video clip of them walking on the beach in Holland....I’ve had this strange feeling... that perhaps things are exactly the way I believe or want to believe.
Theo Jansen is a Dutch Leonardo da Vinci- a scientist, sculptor, inventor, computer programmer and creator of still life. Several years ago he dreamed of creatures...wind powered animals...that could roam the beaches in herds, evolve and eventually breach land.
Starting with the simplest of elements, plastic electrical tubing, bags, soda bottles for air collection.....he designed creatures who walk on their own, pause in the wind....and most recently “learned” to throw down a small anchor against fierce ocean winds.
He studies the herd and culls out the promising ones, the ones that show speed, agility, some new feature that sustain their survivability. He re-energizes the herd with the best adaptations. He gives them pseudo-scientific names which pokes fun at our own species lexicon....and now he is creating slow moving gigantic beasts to lumber on land...which look frighteningly similar to dinosaurs.
He laments they do not have brains yet....and therefore can’t be left alone for long periods of time...which means about...ten minutes. But he hopes by dreaming...and allowing his imagination to be free of controls, he can problem-solve the obvious need for intelligence and how to artificially create it.
I’ve heard of theories...which suggest that we may be living in a jelly bean...surrounded by other jelly beans. In other words, we live in a finite encapsulated universe...surrounded by other finite encapsulated universes....sort of like jelly beans resting in a bowl.
I can’t help but think when I watch Jansen’s creatures of some genius in our universe or another who tinkered with the organic elements of the solar system...and designed life...a whole programmable system...that starts with a very basic combination and slowly grows into complexity...a genius or perhaps even a process.. who hitched these seeds to comets and meteors and spread them throughout our jelly bean...and maybe into other jelly beans...or vice versa.
There is something familiar and disturbing about strandbeestens....art that whispers...a secret... or hints that reality is not quite the way you believe....akin to the older kid who whispered into your ear that Santa Claus wasn’t real....there was another explanation for why presents suddenly appeared.
Ever since I saw the first video clip of them walking on the beach in Holland....I’ve had this strange feeling... that perhaps things are exactly the way I believe or want to believe.
Theo Jansen is a Dutch Leonardo da Vinci- a scientist, sculptor, inventor, computer programmer and creator of still life. Several years ago he dreamed of creatures...wind powered animals...that could roam the beaches in herds, evolve and eventually breach land.
Starting with the simplest of elements, plastic electrical tubing, bags, soda bottles for air collection.....he designed creatures who walk on their own, pause in the wind....and most recently “learned” to throw down a small anchor against fierce ocean winds.
He studies the herd and culls out the promising ones, the ones that show speed, agility, some new feature that sustain their survivability. He re-energizes the herd with the best adaptations. He gives them pseudo-scientific names which pokes fun at our own species lexicon....and now he is creating slow moving gigantic beasts to lumber on land...which look frighteningly similar to dinosaurs.
He laments they do not have brains yet....and therefore can’t be left alone for long periods of time...which means about...ten minutes. But he hopes by dreaming...and allowing his imagination to be free of controls, he can problem-solve the obvious need for intelligence and how to artificially create it.
I’ve heard of theories...which suggest that we may be living in a jelly bean...surrounded by other jelly beans. In other words, we live in a finite encapsulated universe...surrounded by other finite encapsulated universes....sort of like jelly beans resting in a bowl.
I can’t help but think when I watch Jansen’s creatures of some genius in our universe or another who tinkered with the organic elements of the solar system...and designed life...a whole programmable system...that starts with a very basic combination and slowly grows into complexity...a genius or perhaps even a process.. who hitched these seeds to comets and meteors and spread them throughout our jelly bean...and maybe into other jelly beans...or vice versa.
There is something familiar and disturbing about strandbeestens....art that whispers...a secret... or hints that reality is not quite the way you believe....akin to the older kid who whispered into your ear that Santa Claus wasn’t real....there was another explanation for why presents suddenly appeared.
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A BMW commercial featuring Jansen and his beasts...short but amazing.
