VANCOUVER ISLAND WINDTALK

Mr. GQ does it again. Always on the cutting edge of current trends, gotta love it

Of course, being the dark-ages cavecreature I am, I found the "sex" link on the page irresistible and, lo and behold, a "Karma Sutra manual for in-car entertainment” covers almost anything on the matter including avoiding seatbelts and gearknobs how to prevent unfortunate use of the horn" (not sure why all of those weren't incorporated somehow, a bit lame on that front).

Also liked the dissolvable dress for those rainy autumn days

Maybe we could get one of those things to help pick up firewood and garbate off the beach at Nitinat?

Thats really cool

I remember seeing this guy on the Discovery Channel. I found an old clip from Daily Planet, but I think there is a more recent one that shows more detail in how he creates each component. I'll keep looking.

The old story: http://www.exn.ca/video/?Video=20010525-ww-strand.asx

edit: you can find a lot on this guy if you google "Theo Jansen"

more movies of his animals are here: http://www.strandbeest.com/movies.html

Now why have I never seen these things before???? And they are from Vancouver?! They look like something da Vinci would have loved! Art meeting engineering meeting invention!

Although he was on Canada's Discovery Channel, he is Dutch, not from Vancouver.

You may notice the 2 litre pop bottles in his sculptures. If I remember correctly, these store compressed air generated from the wind catching components. After a pressure threshold is reached, this compressed air is released through the drive mechanism, and the creature moves. This explains why the sculptures move so quickly in seemingly little wind.