Anthony Howe is a kinetic sculptor living in Eastsound, Washington. The sculptor works mainly with stainless steel. His sculptures come to life with every gust of wind, as if by magic, a fabulous, hypnotizing sight.
The video below shows best works Anthony Howe, it is noticeable that facial expressions change with a gust of wind and glimpses of light.
Anthony Howe is a typical city dweller, in whose biography you can find references to places like Manhattan or Seattle at every turn. And yet, it was he, who grew up in the concrete jungle, who managed to find common language with the forces of nature, making them allies in his work. Wind is the main component without which Hove's sculptures simply could not exist.
OCTO 3 . Stainless steel. 7.6 m high x 9.1 m wide x 9.1 m deep. 3200 kg. 16 connected blades rotating on a circular shaft. Withstands wind speeds of 90 mph. Provided various options night illumination. Sold to Dubai, UAE.
Even the lightest breeze can set dozens of rotating parts of the sculptures in motion. Howe says he takes great care to test his sculptures for wind resistance. One way is to mount the sculpture on your Ford F-150 and then drive it down the freeway.
About Face . Stainless steel, copper. 2.2 m high x 1.6 m wide x 1.5 m deep. 100 individually balanced copper panels.
Howe starts with digital modeling using software Rhinoceros 3D, then the steel elements of the sculptures are made using plasma cutting and assembled using traditional metal working techniques.
Octo 
Olotron 
In-Out Quotient 
Vlast-O- 
In Cloud Light 
Kinetic Wind Sculpture 
The creation of kinetic sculptures, that is, those that can move, as a direction in art arose not so long ago - in the mid-50s of the last century, and as an additional example, we can recall the works of Theo Jansen. However, unlike Jansen's plastic sculptures, Anthony works with metal, predominantly steel. Using steel reinforcement combined with forged curved forms and fiberglass-covered disks, Howe creates fantastic sculptures. In calm weather, they surprise with their elegance, and with the slightest breath of wind they begin to move, spinning in a dance that only they understand and creating an inexplicable secret harmony.
Anthony Howe has been creating kinetic sculptures for about 20 years. "I'm trying to create objects, appearance which will be associated with attributes science fiction just like with biological and astronomical models,” says the author.
The sculptor was born in 1954 in Salt Lake City (Utah, USA). Anthony Howe began his creative career as an artist and only after moving to New York moved from painting to sculpture. The author became widely known in the late 1990s.
Spine Tower
Modern artists and sculptors have long gone beyond the generally accepted concept of “ fine art" They became real inventors and as a result created a separate artistic direction, called “kinetic art”. Kineticism is based on a simple idea: under the influence of wind, light and movement, you can create a stunning artistic object that literally “comes to life” before the eyes of the audience. Our selection contains the most impressive examples of kinetic sculptures created by Sovriska figures.
THE INHABITANTS OF THE SANDY BEACHES BY THEO JANSEN
Dutch artist Theo Jansen creates truly unique art objects that are driven by gusts of wind. Fantastic creatures of gigantic proportions walk freely along the sandy beaches, leaving the captivated audience in complete delight and amazement. These characters seem to have stepped out of the pages of post-apocalyptic novels and now live among people.
Back in the 90s, Jansen created a computer program with which he was able to calculate the evolution of many creatures that were in the struggle for survival. Seriously fascinated by this matter, he decided to transfer his developments from the computer screen to real life. To create the giant inhabitants of the sandy coasts, the artist uses plastic tubes, which he buys for 10 cents per meter. Cable ties, tape, plastic bottles and nylon threads. The result is very light and inexpensive kinetic sculptures, vaguely reminiscent of bizarre insects, each of which contains an average of 375 tubes.
SPACE ART OBJECTS ANTHONY HOWE
Contemporary art closely interacts with information technology, And bright that proof is the work of the American sculptor Anthony Howe. It is with the help of a computer that the master has been creating autonomous kinetic sculptures for the past 17 years. Huge art objects react to such natural phenomena like light and wind.
The author of the “space” sculptures admits that he draws inspiration from astronomical and microbiological models. Howe primarily uses fiberglass and stainless steel in his work. The sculptor achieves three-dimensional harmony by creating symmetrical and asymmetrical balance between multiple axes. Looking at these unique creations, it really seems that they were not created by man at all, but rather they came to us from outer space.
A TOUCHING LOVE STORY FROM Tamara KVESITADZE
Another stunning sculpture called “Man and Woman” is located in Batumi (Georgia). The author of this creation is Georgian sculptor Tamara Kvesitadze. Every evening at 19.00 an 8-meter steel composition begins to move, playing out a real love drama. The fact is that the sculpture depicts the Muslim Azerbaijani Ali and the Georgian princess Nino from famous novel, which was supposedly written by Kurban Said in 1937.
In the book, the action takes place in the Caucasus against the backdrop of the First World War. The novel “Ali and Nino” raises the most difficult questions related to the search for ways to reconcile Islam and Christianity, West and East, men and women. In the evening, at the most romantic time, the statues begin to move towards each other, unite in touching embraces on short time and then break up. The performance lasts only 10 minutes, but in this short period of time the sculpture manages to tell an incredibly touching love story that does not leave any viewer indifferent.
HYPNOTIC MECHANISMS OF BOB POTTS
Bob Potts is a painter and sculptor from San Francisco. He creates amazing kinetic sculptures that imitate the smooth movements of fish and insects, the flapping of bird wings, and the movements of boat oars. In the process of working on his art objects, the artist uses a variety of parts: chains, levers, gears and connecting rods. It is with their help that he creates stunning minimalist sculptures, focused only on movement.
For his work, the sculptor (and also a professional carpenter) uses mainly stainless steel, brass, aluminum, copper, bronze and wood. To begin with, he creates a prototype of the future sculpture from wood, calculates the dimensions and geometric proportions. The master creates each of his creations slowly, carefully calculating every detail. Often the original is very different from its prototype.
MAGIC RAIN FROM ART+COM
A kinetic sculpture located in the first terminal of Singapore's Changi Airport (by the way, repeatedly recognized best airport in the world), consists of 608 elements simulating raindrops that seem frozen in the air. Thanks to the operation of special motors built into the ceiling, the drops are set in motion every 15 minutes and demonstrate something like a rain dance - a truly impressive spectacle.
The art object was created by the Berlin company ART+COM. The drops are made of lightweight aluminum with a copper coating. A similar large-scale sculpture from ART+COM was presented at the Munich BMW Museum in 2008. It consisted of 714 metal spheres suspended on the thinnest steel wires 0.2 mm thick. The wires are almost impossible to see, so it feels like the “drops” are floating in the air. By the way, the ART+COM studio received the highest award for this work, the One Show Design Awards - the “Oscar” of the advertising industry.
BIOLOGICAL FORMS OF LIFE TSOYA URAM
Seoul-based artist Choi Uram creates interesting kinetic sculptures that mimic natural life forms. To produce his works, the master uses various types of metals, gearboxes, motors, as well as processors and circuit boards that set the sculptures in motion. Each exhibit is equipped with a very complex mechanism, and therefore, before exhibitions, Tsoi has to explain in detail to the organizers how to adjust the work of the sculpture if it suddenly loses its rhythm.
Over time, parts wear out to such an extent that the object becomes unusable. Then Tsoi dismantles the sculpture to use the remaining parts to create his new masterpiece.
CLASSICS IS A FLEXIBLE CONCEPT: AMAZING SCULPTURES BY LI HUNBO
At first glance, the works of the Chinese artist and sculptor Li Hongbo may seem ordinary and even mediocre, but once you touch the sculpture, not a trace will remain of classical art. What appeared to be a monolithic sculpture made of plaster or marble turns out to be a stack of sheets of paper. Tens of thousands of pages, glued together in a special way, in their original form look like the most ordinary statues. Metamorphoses begin if you pull part of the sculpture up or move it to the side.
Li uses an ancient method of gluing paper, which is widely used in China to make decorative items and children's toys. Lee found an original use case for this technology: a sculptor works with various types paper, gluing the sheets together along lines that form a pattern reminiscent of a honeycomb. Each creation of Li Hongbo is the fruit of painstaking self made which can last for several months. For example, for a human-sized figure, the artist used about 20 thousand paper sheets.
Harmony, beauty and justice are what everyone can bring to this world. But some of us are able to change it dramatically and in a big way. Moreover, this does not require suitcases of money, special connections in the right ministry, or a large bribe to an official. Now you will see inventions that at first glance are very simple and may even seem useless to some, but who knows, perhaps in the future they will radically change our world. After all, they are already helping millions. So, let's go.
Ice stupas against drought “Towers of ice” help the inhabitants of the Himalayas adapt to climate change. They are created by Indian engineer Sonam Wangchuk. He laid a siphon pipeline from a mountain river to one of the villages. Erupting under pressure from a vertical pipe, like a geyser, the water freezes, forming a 20-meter ice tower, reminiscent of a Buddhist sanctuary - a stupa. In the spring, such a “stupa” melts, irrigating the dry soil. The system is easily scalable, and then the engineer laid pipelines for another 50 towers. Well, at the end of 2016, Sonam was invited to Switzerland to create an ice stupa. The project was successfully implemented and today the company is engaged in the widespread construction of ice towers around the world.
Iron fish - against anemia A Cambodian company has produced a fish that can fight iron deficiency, which, due to poor nutrition, occurs in 3.5 billion people. It would seem a useless invention - the fish are made in Cambodia from scrap metal, which is tested for quality. When cooked, it releases iron, which then enters the body. Basically, this iron deficiency is caused by a poor diet that does not include red meat and vegetables. And this is especially true for Cambodia, since more than half the population lives on less than $2 a day. Maybe for the residents of Russia we could also invent some kind of fish, but not iron fish, but, for example, with vitamin D? Indeed, according to the conclusion of the Federal Research Center for Nutrition, Biotechnology and Food Safety, 80% of Russians have an acute shortage of this important element.
Now let's move on to digital technologies. (Sort it out) Raspberry Pi - a computer for the poorest For many poor people main problem When buying a computer, the price is relatively high, but with the advent of this computer for the poorest, this problem ceases to be relevant.
This extremely cheap computer was created by British programmer David Braben. The device is a small board the size of bank card. You can connect external devices to it, including a network cable. The Raspberry Pi has a 700 MHz processor and flash-based persistent memory. The cost of such a computer is 25 and 35 US dollars, depending on the modification.
Here's another gadget: Kilgoris Project - an e-book instead of textbooks. E-books for students from poor countries are cheaper than $100 tablets, and most importantly, one such e-book can store all the textbooks in all subjects for all years of study. And efficiency makes it possible to combat chronic shortages of electricity.
Now about football: Home power plant in a soccer ball A group of students came up with a way for even children to generate electricity for their own needs. They created a soccer ball that generates energy while playing. An hour of playing football can provide a person with light for the evening. Moreover, using this device you can also charge mobile devices - phones, e-books, tablet computers.
Convenient Water Carrier In rural areas, you often have to walk many miles to get water. It's tedious and takes a lot of time. A “water wheel” can solve this problem. It has a capacity of 45 liters and pushing the wheel requires much less effort. It is also durable enough to be used even on rough terrain. Thanks to its large capacity and ease of use, it saves a lot of time and energy. It would seem that it is so simple that there is no point in talking about it. But how many thousands of poor people has this actually made life easier?
January 19th, 2015
It so happened that since October 2009 I have been constantly running the “Artifact” section in the magazine “Popular Mechanics”, dedicated to kinetic and “near-kinetic” scientific and technical art. During this time, I wrote and edited more than 60 articles about various kinetic sculptors and artists, and corresponded and communicated with more than two hundred masters of artistic mechanics.
Chris Eckert (USA). Auto Ink. Device for automatic tattooing. The image is pre-loaded into the computer's memory. Only tested on temporary tattoos using a pen, but can also work with a needle.
I personally know Nemo Gold, Brad Litwin, Ruben Margolin, Chris Eckert, Julien Berthier, Gregory Barsamian, Balint Boligo and dozens of other kinetic sculptors. Over time, I realized that I could easily write a dissertation on kinetic art, and even more than one; in principle, if our education system made it possible to defend a dissertation without going through three years of graduate school, I would do so; an extra crust wouldn’t hurt. There is some kind of option for such a plan, but I haven’t figured it out yet. Another thing is that I am not sure that in Russia there are specialists who understand kinetics better than me, and therefore I have a vague idea of who could become a leader. I never studied kinetic art specifically - it just happened that way. Well, okay, we'll survive without a crust.
Choi Woo-ram ( South Korea). Echo Navigo Larva. Kinetic skeleton of a fantastic creature of the species Anmorome Istiophorus platypterus Uram.
It would be interesting to organize in Moscow or St. Petersburg - actually, it doesn’t matter, in any city in Russia - a full-fledged kinetic art exhibition or some specific sculptor. I don't have anything like that myself financial opportunities, but there are organizational ones. Contacting and negotiating with any master from the list given at the end of the post is not difficult for me at all. Most of the time I can just call and say something like “Hey Ted, do you want an exhibition in Moscow?”
Nemo Gold (USA). Doubtful. One of the nicest robots by the American sculptor. According to the author, in its body movements the robot is completely alien to doubts and moral principles.
Many people know that I give open lectures on scientific and technical topics - I gave them at Seliger, at regional Russian science festivals, on the Siberian “Robosib” and so on. After thinking, I developed lecture on kinetic art- why not? You can even make a course of lectures - I have enough material and knowledge for 16-20 academic hours without repetition, but with illustrations and video materials.
Joseph Herscher (USA). Bread Goldberg Machine. Joseph Herscher's Rube Goldberg machine quickly cooks bread and sends it straight to your plate.
Christopher Miskja (Norway). Machine that uses a thousand years to shut itself down. A mechanical device driven by an engine. The engine drives the first ring, the second one rotates from it through a gear, and so on. The last ring has a pin, which after some time will press the engine shutdown button. This will happen after 1000 years of rotation of the machine - this is how the gear ratios are calculated.
Anthony Howe (USA). In Cloud Light III. Classic street kinetic sculpture. Rotates under the influence of the wind (however, Howe’s works are often equipped with motors to work even in calm conditions)
There is also a subsection of water sculptures, where not air, but water, fire or fog is used as propulsion. For example, Ned Kann.
SOUND MACHINES
A separate area of kinetics is unusual musical instruments and noise robots. In this genre, it is not so much the sound being extracted that is important, but rather the method of extracting it.
The Canadian Maxime de La Rochefoucauld is very interesting here. He makes musical instrument(string or percussion) from all sorts of things, and a column with a spring attached to it is built into its design. It supplies low-frequency (or high-frequency) noise to the speaker, the spring vibrates and hits the strings, producing assonant sounds. De La Rochefoucauld has a whole orchestra of this madness.
Maxime de La Rochefoucauld (Canada). Drum kit from the Ki Automates series. Maxim applies vibration to the speaker, a drumstick attached to it on a movable spring beats the stretched skin.
The most interesting kinetic musician, so to speak, is the Swiss Zimoun, a sound architect. He takes various surfaces (most often cardboard boxes) and attaches to them systems of balls driven by motors. The balls randomly hit the boxes, creating a monotonous sound background of a hypnotic quality.
Zimun (Switzerland). 329 prepared dc-motors, cotton balls, toluene tank. Zimun once bought a huge toluene tank, cleaned it from the inside and equipped it with 329 motors with cotton balls attached to them. Now there is a measured, oppressive cacophonous madness inside the tank.
Video:
DRAWING MACHINES
A popular trend is drawing machines. A typical representative is Balint Boligo, a Briton of Hungarian origin. He makes very strange drawing machines that can draw monotonous patterns for days. He does a lot more, just this good example.
Balint Boligo (UK). Polycycle. Machine-artist. He draws no worse than modern abstractionists and expressionists.
I really love his work The Page Turner:
The luxurious Rube Goldberg car was in the OK Go video:
INTERACTIVE AND DIGITAL ART
The last fifteen years have given a sharp impetus to another direction of kinetic art - various digital interactive installations that interact with the viewer. The coolest thing I've seen in this genre is Daniel Rozin's interactive mirrors. His mirrors are opaque, but consisting of many pixels (wooden, metal, glass); The camera reads the viewer's face, and the mirror forms images by changing the position of the pixels.
Daniel Rozin (USA). Peg Mirror. 650 cylindrical wooden blocks change their position relative to the light source, forming the viewer’s image.
For example, the Dutchman Marnix de Nijs showed himself well in this context. In his works, the viewer takes a certain position, and the images on interactive screens are formed depending on his behavior.
Marnix de Nijs (Netherlands). Exploded Views Remapping Firenze. An installation in which the viewer can “walk” through interactively and randomly generated world landmarks. In this case, the device is configured to interactive map Florence. The picture on the screen depends on the intensity of your running.
FUNCTIONAL KINETIC ART
A rare but interesting direction is the creation of objects of art that perform some real function. Let's say, very beautiful devices. For example, Wayne Belger makes uniquely designed pinhole cameras from skulls, parts of destroyed buildings and blood. Each camera is created for a specific series of photographs, and the exhibition displays both the photographs and the devices with which they were taken.
Wayne Belger (USA). Untouchable. A pinhole camera made using the blood of a person infected with HIV.
Installation with a camera and photographs.
An absolutely amazing lady - Tatiana van Wark from Holland. She is literally obsessed with science and scientific instruments, and made her first oscilloscope at the age of 14. Now she is over 60, and she continues to make scientific instruments of increased aesthetics.
Tatiana van Wark (Netherlands). The Harmonium. Device for harmonic analysis and signal synthesis. Completely working and suitable for use in the laboratory, just aesthetically very beautiful.
WORKS BEYOND CLASSIFICATION
Finally, there are unique sculptors. Which do things that don't fit into traditional kinetic subgenres.
Francois Junot (France). Alexandre Pouchkin. A mechanical automaton depicting Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin can write 1458 (!) different texts and drawings, imitating Pushkin’s handwriting. He dips his pen into the inkwell, moves his head and hands, and writes and writes. No electronics - only mechanics.
An absolutely unique example is the animated sculptures of Gregory Barsamyan. He makes rotating mechanisms that you need to look at in the stroboscopic flash of light - and you get the feeling that a plasticine cartoon action is unfolding right in front of you, which you can touch with your hands.
Gregory Barsamyan (USA). Feral Font. One of the examples of mechanical “cartoons” by Gregory Barsamyan.
The Korean Choi Woo-Ram also defies classification. He will create incredible beauty and complexity of fantastic animals (mostly “extinct”), to which he gives Latin names and invents complex legends
Choi U-Ram (South Korea). Custos Cavum. The skeleton of a fictional creature Choi, the now dead guardian of the gate between our world and the other world. When the last Custos Cavum died, the last gate closed forever.
"Near-Kinetic" SCULPTURES
“Near-kinetic” art is also interesting. When there may be no moving parts in a sculpture, but its materials and execution technique imply the technogenic origin of the work. Let's say the insects of Christopher Conte.
Christopher Conte (USA). Red Widow. Typical Conte work.
Or figures from Jeremy Mayer's typewriter parts.
Jeremy Mayer (USA). Bust IV. Typical Mayer work.
Les Machines de l'île (France). Le Grand Elephant. A huge steam (actually, of course, diesel) elephant, an imitation of a similar device from the work of Jules Verne, travels around Nantes and gives rides to those who wish.
In total, this is about a quarter of the sculptors with whom I am more or less familiar. I know about about two hundred more, but I have never contacted them, because they work in genres about which I have already done materials. Or I just don't like them for some reason. This also happens.
In general, this is not quite a classification, of course. There are much more directions, in each I can name from 3-4 to 10-15 representatives. I find it difficult to say how many kinetic sculptors there are in the world. There are very few of them in Russia (only the kinetic showcases of Evgeniy Klimov immediately come to mind - in style they belong to the mentioned class of “fair machines”, and the “kinetic fish” of the ArtMechanicus group). In the meantime, this is a very significant and interesting layer of art, which would be interesting to popularize and develop.
So if I do find opportunities to both give lectures on kinetic art and organize an exhibition, don’t pass me by. It will be interesting.
Kinetic art V recent years is at the peak of popularity, because masters who have mastered light and movement manage to achieve a stunning effect - to overcome the static nature of sculpture. In our review - 8 most original examples how art objects come to life.
1.Fantastic mechanism from artist Lime Young
Lime Young is a true virtuoso. The master manages to construct the most complex mechanisms from circuit boards, microprocessors, servos and other mechanical devices. When put into action, his kinetic sculptures have a magnetic effect on viewers, because it is simply impossible for the average person to solve the mystery of the mechanism.
2.Car silhouettes made from metal spheres
appeared several years ago, but still causes delight. 714 metal spheres fold into the shape of car models different years release.
3. Wing Flap by Bob Potts
70-year-old sculptor Bob Potts creates minimalist, but no less impressive works. His kinetic sculptures imitate the flapping of a bird's wings or the movement of an oar while rowing. It’s amazing how the master manages to convey the trajectory of movement so accurately.
4. "Dancing" sculptures by Anthony Howe
works with rough material – steel reinforcement, but creates surprisingly harmonious kinetic sculptures. In calm weather they look elegant and sophisticated, and with the first breath of wind they begin their fancy dance.
5. "Mechanical fish" from the art group ArtMechanicus
Through efforts art group ArtMechanicus more than one “mechanical fish” has been born. The collection of Moscow masters includes “Fish-House”, reminiscent of Noah’s Ark, “Fish-Knight”, personifying a lonely horseman, “Nut Fish”, symbolizing the desire for beauty, and “Fish-ram” - an allegory of the struggle between living and inanimate principles.
6. Wooden Wonders by David Roy
David Roy gives his own touching and tender names - “Fiesta”, “Summer Rain”, “ Sun dance", "Serenade", "Zephyr". Wooden creations are set in motion by the wind and immediately become light and graceful.
7. Kinetic device that plays the violin. By Seth Goldstein
Seth Goldstein is a mechanical engineer who managed to create a device that can copy the movement of hands. The kinetic sculpture, equipped with drives, rotors, pulleys and computer chips, recognizes audio files played on an electronic keyboard and then plays a melody on the violin.
8.Giant animal sculptures by Theo Jansen
Theo Jansen creates giant miracle monsters that, obeying gusts of wind, come to life from plastic tubes, cable cord, nylon ropes and adhesive tape. And then he arranges fun beach walks for insect-like animals. Without a doubt.