A spring, a spring, a marvelous thing!

Art is the creation or mimicking of living objects. When the artist is gone, his objects live on. Not necessarily in the same way as the artist wanted to but still. This kinetic sculpture based on the slinky by Natalia Rodionova mimics real organic movement gives live to the inanimate material for a while.

There’s always something innately fascinating about a machine or artwork accurately mimicking the movements of the animal kingdom. Natalia’s work reminds of the dutch sculptor Theo Jansen who makes carefully designed creatures that are windpowered. This being a cardboard website I especially like to mention the Animaris Rhinoceros. It looks like a combination of an army and an animal! Theo Jansen eventually wants his animals to live on their own so he tries to equip them with means to survive, taking the creation of living creatures a step further than temporary animation.

This work by Pinzaan from Taiwan shares some of the same technical principles as the above works but translates them to design. The name of the chair is “Flexible Love” (yes, ladies). It can accommodate a single person as a single-sized seat, but the chair has the ability to expand to a serpentine length to seat parties up to sixteen.

The slinky (the dutch word “traploopveer” translates to “stairwalking spring”) is probably a big inspiration to these artists…

“What walks down stairs, alone or in pairs, and makes a slinkity sound
A spring, a spring, a marvelous thing! Everyone knows it’s Slinky.
It’s Slinky, it’s Slinky. For fun it’s a wonderful toy.
It’s Slinky, it’s Slinky. It’s fun for a girl or a boy.
It’s fun for a girl or boy!”