Birds in Flight • Motion in Nature

Earlier this week I posted about David just finishing Journey which is one of the kinetic sculptures from his birds/flight series. It is a motion that continues to fascinate him. No wonder he sent me a link to this incredible movie of a murmuration or the dance of swarming birds. 

A bird ballet | Music Video from Neels CASTILLON on Vimeo.

It was captured by filmmaker Neels Castillon and his photo director Mathhias Touzeris. They were on a video shoot for a commercial, waiting for the right sunset and the birds started to dance. Take a few minutes to appreciate the art in nature.

 via: Colossal

Journey Comes to an End • Sculpture Edition Done

This week David and I got to have a celebration dinner. We do every time he completes a sculpture edition. He put his signature on Journey #95 and that ends an edition that began back in 2008.  

Journey was the sculpture that almost wasn't. David had been trying to design a sculpture with his favorite bird motion, that was small for international shipping but still graceful. It took a lot of experimentation to achieve the best effect. Now, five years later, all but one has been sold. They have been shipped to Canada, England, Turkey, Italy, Germany, Switzerland and Ireland.

As he made this last group he discovered some new production techniques that would have saved him bundles of time over the past five years. He never stops experimenting!

Read more about the design process of Journey and see other photos here. The last one can be ordered here.

Kinetic Animated GIFs by Paolo Ceric

We were both taken by the visual impact of the optical animated gifs design by Paolo Ceric and shared on Colossal this week.

Paolo is from Croatia and is developing his skills at creating visual art through coding. His website with more of his work is Patakk. Worth exploring.

The Event of a Thread Video

Back at the beginning of January, I posted about the kinetic swinging event by Ann Hamilton in NYC. A the time of that post I hadn't yet seen a video of the sculpture in action. One was posted on Colossal by Paul Octavious shortly after. Take a look......

Did any one go?

Mechanical Principles 1930

A collector of David's work from Israel sent us a link to this wonderful short video by avant-garde filmmaker and photographer Ralph Steiner. It is a collage of mechanical motion. It is on YouTube but the fascinating fact is that it was made in 1930 or 1933 depending on the Internet source you read!

I appreciated the comment posted by Regreex on the youTube site labeling the various mechanisms.

"Some of the mechanisms featured: 0:16 Positive displacement pump 0:26 Four-stroke engine piston 0:50 Simple steam engines or pumps 2:00 Steam engine reversing gear as on ships 3:10 Differential gear 4:05 Worm gear 4:10 Archimedes screw 5:22 Geneva gear 5:32 Pawl and ratchet 5:55 Grasshopper escapement 7:15 Scotch yokes 8:07 Positive displacement pump (same as 0:16) 9:29 Wheel-and-disc integrator used in analogue computers 9:54 Possibly a turbine"

Thanks Tzippi for the link.