Strandbeests

I have just discovered what may be my absolute favorite work of art. A kinetic sculptor by the name of Theo Jansen has made it his life's goal to create life out of soda bottles, fabric, and yellow plastic tubes. For years he has created beautiful and complex creatures that roam the beach of Holland, surviving only off the power of the wind. He calls them Strandbeests.

The sheer, eerie beauty of these incredible creatures is astounding. They truly give you an appreciation for the complexity of life. At first glance, they don't seem like much, just sailboats that can walk across the sand, but the ingenuity and the mechanisms that bring these animals to life are beautiful and perfect in the same way that the biological processes that keep us alive are fascinating in their design.

Theo's creations behave exactly like animals, moving up and down the beach, storing energy, and surviving the elements. They survive solely on the wind through an incredible technique. When the wind is perpendicular to their bodies, they follow the wind, using it to move. When the wind shifts to blow parallel to their bodies, their wings unfold to catch it, and power pumps that pressurize air into plastic soda bottles. They literally eat wind. Like cold blooded animals absorbing sunlight, or bovine animals grazing in a field, these incredible animals feed off the movement of the air itself.

These animals even have self-preservation instincts. When the wind is too strong, and in danger of tearing the "wings" of these animals apart, for instance during a storm, the wings retract, catching no more wind until the danger is past. If a beast finds itself stuck in the loose, dry sand of the beach, unable to be moved by wind alone, another set of feet, powered by the pressurized "stomach" of soda bottles, moves it until it reaches solid, wetter sand. These creatures even move like real animals, with "heads" that sense the environment around them, twisting around on pneumatic necks. These creatures have everything from binary brains that count the steps from the ocean and the dunes, sensors that detect the water, and make it turn around to keep it from drowning, even a way to hammer itself into place with a stake so it doesn't get blown away. Jansen's goal is to make these beasts completely autonomous, so his legacy will live on, roaming the beaches of Holland.

Imagine, 20 years from now, with Theo Jansen's work complete, a herd of these majestic, skeletal creatures scuttles across the beach. They stop a moment to rest, their wings flapping as they garner the energy to move on. One by one, their wings retract and they start scuttling again, slowly at first, moving further down the beach until they are out of site.

Imagine stumbling down a sand dune into a herd of these creatures, laying as they swallow the wind itself, wings flapping, every now and then one moves a bit further down the beach. Jansen's vision of these beautiful, complex creatures is breathtaking, and it illustrates the barest, primal form of the artist's impulse, the impulse to convey a message in the form of a feeling, such as the feeling of peace as one overlooks an expansive plain filled with herds of majestic creatures, thriving as the wind sighs through the grass.