Jansen's strandbeests
Jansen is amazing. Out of plastic bottles, PVC tubes and o-rings, he makes transitors, osciliators, flip/flops, joints, put them together into linkages, then into “organism” with complex behaviors you wouldn’t assign to a PVC tube in the first place. In a way, this is what programming is about, but given physical shape.
I can appreciate the naive wonder with which he talks about his own work. This is an invitation to introspection: The mesmerizing quality of those jewels of mechanic that convert simple linear motion into a slow life-like walk, alien and familiar at the same time. The singular aspect of the creatures, and their unique gait opens a portal to a different world, a different approach to engineering that is more life-like.
The refined elegance of their shape belies the industrial and rough nature of all its component. The smoothness of their walk belies its mechanical nature and the stiffness of its joints. Something wholy opposite to the original nature of the constituent elements emerges from their composition.