Strandbeesten, by Theo Jansen

JA May 23

Image via Theo Jansen

Here’s something by the way of strange, kinetic, skeletal creatures, if that’s your kind of thing – Theo Jansen, a Dutch sculptor has long been doing some amazing things with the rather modest tools of plastic tubing, lemonade bottles and bicycle pumps.

In short, he creates ‘Strandbeesten’ or beach beasts – animals which walk along the sands of Holland powered by nothing more than the wind. Apparently, they have the ability to stay away from deep water and dry ground so as not to become stranded. To get a sense a sense of how it works, have a look at this short clip below.

Jansen powers a Strandbeest like so:

Self-propelling beach animals like Animaris Percipiere have a stomach . This consists of recycled plastic bottles containing air that can be pumped up to a high pressure by the wind. This is done using a variety of bicycle pump, needless to say of plastic tubing. Several of these little pumps are driven by wings up at the front of the animal that flap in the breeze. It takes a few hours, but then the bottles are full. They contain a supply of potential wind. Take off the cap and the wind will emerge from the bottle at high speed. The trick is to get that untamed wind under control and use it to move the animal.

… The upper and lower leg parts move relative to one another in such a way that the hip joint (at the juncture with the upper leg) remains at a constant height, just as with the axle of a wheel. But they don’t have the wheel’s disadvantages; they don’t need to touch every inch of the ground along the way, as a wheel has to. Legs can leave out patches of ground by stepping over them. Which is why you can better have legs than wheels on sandy ground.

The best example of the variety of his work is probably this BMW-sponsored ad, but if you can’t stomach the commercialisation, then have a look at the short sequence below, which is the raw footage for the documentary on Jansen by Alexander Schlichter. Apparently the creature filmed is ‘Animaris Umerus’, getting tested on the beaches of Scheveningen, Netherlands. (via The Design Files)

Animaris Umerus from Alexander Schlichter on Vimeo.

Our Friends

• Overland
• Alien Onion
• Ampersand Duck
• Andrew McDonald
• A Pair of Ragged Claws
• Arts Victoria
• Australia Council for the Arts
• Ben Eltham
• Bookshow blog
• CAL
• City of Tongues
• Crikey
• darkly wise, rudely great
• David Astle
• Elmo Keep Does Stuff
• The Ember
• Fly the Falcon blog
• Going Down Swinging
• Griffith Review
• Hackpacker
• Harvest
• HEAT
• Island
• Killings blog
• Literary Minded
• Lorraine Crescent
• Lynden Barber
• Mandy Ord
• Marcus Westbury
• Matilda
• Meanland
• Melbourne University Publishing
• Mel Campbell
• The Monthly
• Musings of an Inappropriate Woman
• Oslo Davis
• Paul Callaghan
• Read, Think, Write
• Sleepers Publishing
• Sorrow at Sills Bend
• SPLOG
• Tom Cho
• Virgule
• Wet Ink
• Wheeler Centre

Comments