Mechanics and Art

In Friday's class the subject of art being a mechanical process was brought up and I just wanted to show this really great video that, in my eyes, blew that statement out of the water.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcR7U2tuNoY

This man, Theo Jansen, completely wowed me once I saw this video. His knack to see something like that is incredible.

He defines himself as two things: an engineer and an artist. Two professions that one would not commonly associate with one another, but then I got to thinking; isn't an engineer just that? A fusion of both those fields? Bridges, computers, cars, heck even staplers were originally something that someone thought up and then created into a physical object.

Wait, what??

That's right, another topic riddled with philosophical concepts. The idea of a stapler that then somehow defines what everything is that encompasses the idea of stapler and then those ideas are then transformed into action and ultimately become a nifty device that enables the user to hold multiple sheets of paper together in an orderly fashion.

"The walls between art and engineering only exist in our mind." -Theo Jansen