Here’s a quick reference guide that will seek to explain the trends, terms, and movements of the brave new media world of art and technology. So you can skim, digest, and be a pseudo-expert next time you’re cornered at a Speed Show exhibition in your local cybercafe. Because, hey, life is short and art long. This week: Kinetic art.So, what is kinetic art?
Art that has moving parts or relies on motion for its effects. The motion can come from nature (wind, water), a motor, sound, light, or even you, the viewer. Kinetic sculpture is the poster child for this type of art, but let’s not forget it can also incorporate mobiles (but not wind chimes, that’s an ornament) and paintings. It was developed as a response to industrialisation as a means of exploring the characteristics of vision and movement while also celebrating the aesthetics of the machine.Where did it come from?
Its origins lie with the Constructivists in Russia around 1919 and their experiments with motion. Although that Dadaist and maker of ready-made mischief Marcel Duchamp created what is considered to be the first kinetic sculpture, the Bicycle Wheel, in 1913. You could say its genesis lies with the invention of the wheel in 4000 BC Mesopotamia, but then you could say a lot of things. Russian Constructivist sculptor Naum Gabo was a pioneer of the form in the 1920s with works like Kinetic Construction (Standing Wave), while in the US Alexander Calder pioneered the flowing motion of mobiles and George Rickey brought it back to mechanics with his graceful but cubic sculptures in the 1950s and ’60s.This week you're really digging…
Willem van Weeghel’s artfully effortless Dynamic Structures, Reuben Heyday Margolin’s mesmerizing Waves series, and Dominic Harris’s digital zoetrope Flutter.Nano talk
Some people may claim it peaked in the 1950s and 60s, but what do they know? Right now we’re practically living in a renaissance period where reactive kinetic artworks meld science, art, and engineering in the exploration of a multi-disciplinary new media frontier. You’re hoping your glowing reactive modulating fibre optic 3D light sculpture will be snapped up at a hefty price at the Kinetica Art Fair in London in February 2011.Describe yourself as…
Galileo sketching a robot with a Zippo lighter.Quote from a famous practitioner
“How can art be realized? Out of volumes, motion, spaces bounded by the great space, the universe… Abstractions that are like nothing in life except in their manner of reacting” — Alexander Calder.Keywords
kinetic, motion, sculpture, mobile, mechanics, machineDifficulty level
GravityAge range
ImmeasurableTagline
The symphony of motion orbiting the mechanics of time.To recap: The dialogue between man and machine expressed through the equilibrium of art and its audience.Next week: 3D printed artPhoto credit.
Art that has moving parts or relies on motion for its effects. The motion can come from nature (wind, water), a motor, sound, light, or even you, the viewer. Kinetic sculpture is the poster child for this type of art, but let’s not forget it can also incorporate mobiles (but not wind chimes, that’s an ornament) and paintings. It was developed as a response to industrialisation as a means of exploring the characteristics of vision and movement while also celebrating the aesthetics of the machine.
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Its origins lie with the Constructivists in Russia around 1919 and their experiments with motion. Although that Dadaist and maker of ready-made mischief Marcel Duchamp created what is considered to be the first kinetic sculpture, the Bicycle Wheel, in 1913. You could say its genesis lies with the invention of the wheel in 4000 BC Mesopotamia, but then you could say a lot of things. Russian Constructivist sculptor Naum Gabo was a pioneer of the form in the 1920s with works like Kinetic Construction (Standing Wave), while in the US Alexander Calder pioneered the flowing motion of mobiles and George Rickey brought it back to mechanics with his graceful but cubic sculptures in the 1950s and ’60s.This week you're really digging…
Willem van Weeghel’s artfully effortless Dynamic Structures, Reuben Heyday Margolin’s mesmerizing Waves series, and Dominic Harris’s digital zoetrope Flutter.Nano talk
Some people may claim it peaked in the 1950s and 60s, but what do they know? Right now we’re practically living in a renaissance period where reactive kinetic artworks meld science, art, and engineering in the exploration of a multi-disciplinary new media frontier. You’re hoping your glowing reactive modulating fibre optic 3D light sculpture will be snapped up at a hefty price at the Kinetica Art Fair in London in February 2011.Describe yourself as…
Galileo sketching a robot with a Zippo lighter.
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“How can art be realized? Out of volumes, motion, spaces bounded by the great space, the universe… Abstractions that are like nothing in life except in their manner of reacting” — Alexander Calder.Keywords
kinetic, motion, sculpture, mobile, mechanics, machineDifficulty level
GravityAge range
ImmeasurableTagline
The symphony of motion orbiting the mechanics of time.To recap: The dialogue between man and machine expressed through the equilibrium of art and its audience.Next week: 3D printed artPhoto credit.