Strandbeests at PEM, a rainy Saturday afternoon
1. The many, many people, especially young adults and older couples, and even more at 2 and 3:30 when the contructions were scheduled to move; the big board showing the beest family tree over 40 years illustrated with sketches by the maker Theo Jansen, a tall, white-haired fellow with piercing eyes; the walls displaying sample struts and trusses, feet and wheels, cams and valves, all made of thermo-plastic pipes and ties; the scattered vertical video screen of the genius speaking of his new genus; the concept spinoffs, e.g. the walking skateboard; the make-your-own table; the people bending to closely inspect the parts or lined up to push the contraptions across the floor; the ambience of reverie that hung over the room like the smoke of a cigar den.
2. How were things attached so they rotated but remained stiff? The organism metaphor: how deep could it go? The sheer overtness and porosity of these moving skeletons. The dream of their self-sufficiency: how far could it be realized? The annual replacement by new species with new capabilites: can any have all? Why does the creator repeatedly mention the posthumous persistence of this life-like form?
3. A trdiptych of video panels: Low grey waves breaking on blonde sand under a bright blue sky. Just this, then entering right with triskelion steps, the PVC-through-saur creaks from panel to panel, trailed by the creator as if in attendance, and exits left. Empty beach again, wave curling aslant the shore. Then, enter left, creator drags the contrivance like a balky child, now in step, now not, across the panels to exit right.
1. The many, many people, especially young adults and older couples, and even more at 2 and 3:30 when the contructions were scheduled to move; the big board showing the beest family tree over 40 years illustrated with sketches by the maker Theo Jansen, a tall, white-haired fellow with piercing eyes; the walls displaying sample struts and trusses, feet and wheels, cams and valves, all made of thermo-plastic pipes and ties; the scattered vertical video screen of the genius speaking of his new genus; the concept spinoffs, e.g. the walking skateboard; the make-your-own table; the people bending to closely inspect the parts or lined up to push the contraptions across the floor; the ambience of reverie that hung over the room like the smoke of a cigar den.
2. How were things attached so they rotated but remained stiff? The organism metaphor: how deep could it go? The sheer overtness and porosity of these moving skeletons. The dream of their self-sufficiency: how far could it be realized? The annual replacement by new species with new capabilites: can any have all? Why does the creator repeatedly mention the posthumous persistence of this life-like form?
3. A trdiptych of video panels: Low grey waves breaking on blonde sand under a bright blue sky. Just this, then entering right with triskelion steps, the PVC-through-saur creaks from panel to panel, trailed by the creator as if in attendance, and exits left. Empty beach again, wave curling aslant the shore. Then, enter left, creator drags the contrivance like a balky child, now in step, now not, across the panels to exit right.
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