This morning I got a last minute email from Dale Dougherty at Make asking if I could quickly write something that personally introduces kinetic art and the Applied Kinetic Arts group for Maker Fire this year. It’s an honor to be asked and I had allot of fun reflecting kinetic art and my friends who make it. I hope you enjoy reading it:
Six years ago I had no idea I was a kinetic artist. In fact, I had no idea I was an artist or a maker at all. I was working on my Ph.D. in Neurobiology at Stanford, which basically involved running experiments for six hours and analyzing data for four hours, with some pizza tossed in between. My research was successful, interesting and challenging, but ultimately unsatisfying. There was no one moment, but I realized that to be satisfied with my work I needed to make things, to produce with my hands and shape materials. I realized I was a maker and an artist.
That was in 2005, the year of the first Maker Faire. While I missed that first gathering of makers, I did attend The Crucible’s Fire Arts Festival where I saw a whole world of amazing, largely machine based art. There was one group in particular that I was strongly drawn to, Kinetic Steam Works (KSW), self-described “steam dorks” who restore and hack steam engines. I stood in the crowd watching their machines spin, cam and crank with eccentric, mechanical life, and felt drawn. Soon, I was sharing workspace and working with KSW. KSW had a motto that rang true for me: “Our aim is to be, rather then to seem.” The engines that KSW worked with could not just seem like the moved, they need to actually move. Working with those steam dorks I realized I was interested in making moving machines, sculptures that would be rather then seem. I wanted to make Kinetic Art.
In its simplest realization kinetic art has moving parts. Kinetic sculptures are art objects that covert energy into action to communicate abstraction. I often think of making kinetic art as the process of making useless machines. And I mean that fondly. Kinetic art is an exploration of movement, mechanism, and mechanical process and logic. But, ultimately, the goal is artistic expression, not the solution to a specific problem. And it’s challenging work. Building even simple, reliable mechanisms is hard, ask a mechanical engineer, but to do it with added aesthetic constraints is even harder. Kinetic sculptures not only need to work a specific way, but they must look a specific way. The tensions in this “aesthetic engineering” engages, challenges and amuses both the artist and scientist working within me. And it also brings the work to life.
Movement easily conveys life, purpose, and agency. I consider all my kinetic sculptures living. They have all the messy disadvantages of living stuff: wearing, breaking, sticking, jamming, and burning out. And all the beauty of living stuff: flow, humor, grace, dynamics, balance, and timing. This living quality makes kinetic art inherently interactive and engaging in ways other arts are not. Nothing captures our attention like motion, and once captured, a kinetic sculpture will hold onto your senses and pull you deeper, raising questions along the way. What is the object? What does it do? Why and how does it move like this? Who made this object move this way?
Kinetic artists, that’s who. Soon after starting to build kinetic work I joined burgeoning group called Applied Kinetic Arts (AKA). Nemo Gould and Christopher “CTP” Palmer founded AKA to promote the (mostly) kinetic art of a growing group of friends and associates. Participation in AKA is always in motion, much like our art. Through AKA members can jointly promote their work on-line, though the AKA blog, and by participating in group shows. More importantly, we share resources and advice. The greatest benefit, though, is having a group of like-minded people to drink a beer and talk shop with.
And it’s this community aspect of AKA that I value most. To personally know both art and the artists is a priceless and ongoing education. Where else could I find someone like CTP, with whom I can have a conversation that moves seamlessly from the subtleties of TIG welding aluminum to those of RS-232. Or Nemo Gould, who takes camp sci-fi and silly robots so seriously, and has shown me how meticulous, crafted kinetic elements can breath life into junk. Ben Cowden’s work shows me how simple gearing and linkages, can capture and mechanically parse human whimsy, while Mark Galt’s clockwork figures allow me to see human motion though the precision of his engineers mind. Jeremy Mayer’s magnificent typewriter assemblages remind me of the creative power of constraint, focus and self imposed limitations. Jonathan Foote, a master geek’gineer, hacker and coder helps me see how to incorporate my digital skills into my hitherto analogue art. New member Ben Carpenter has just begun to incorporate kinetics with his amazing metal working abilities, has taught me more about making metal move then anyone, and who I now help learn creative coding.
Our AKA community is deeply connected with the Make community. As artists we value the actual making, the process, of our work, of laying our hands directly on materials. As a group we value functionality and fun, fostering community and sharing knowledge. We learn from the same how-tos and online tutorials as you, and focus on sharing our methods on our blogs and at events like Maker Faire. I think our work makes a unique contribution to Make culture. It encourages and inspires people not just to make, but also to make beautiful, funny, curious and expressive things. Making is most powerful when you make something with meaning, emotion and thought, something you fill with life. An on-line tutorial can teach you how to make a gear but only your own voice can teach you what only you can make with that gear. Now, go make something that moves.
