How many artificial animals can you encounter on a seaside walk? More than one if you frequent the Dutch coastline where Theo Jansen's moving artworks amble along with the help of their rudimentary senses. The complex wind-powered skeletal constructs that Jansen calls "Strandbeests," or beach beasts, are designed to stay on the beach and live off the sea breeze.
Created entirely from ordinary plastic tubes without any electronics, Jansen has through numerous evolutionary experiments equipped them with ingenious sensing mechanisms that can detect water, avoid obstacles and hammer the animal into the sand before a storm. Giving them the ability to migrate is the next principle he's attempting to master with his newest creature, the Plaudens Vela (fluttering sail beast), which will be a big step forward towards his final goal of creating a completely independent artificial animal.
Undertaking the task of manually evolving a new form of life isn't a challenge anyone would take up lightly, but Jansen was hooked when he tried to replicate the creatures that evolved within a program he designed years ago. Settling on cheap plastic tubes as his raw material, he began constructing his beasts through computer generated designs initially, and entirely freeform later on.
By adding recycled PET bottles, pumps and valves to these skeletons and through the clever use of air pressure, Jansen has managed to give his creations something akin to muscles, nerves and even a type of analog brain capable of reacting to its environment. With each species he evolves more senses and principles, refining them further in newer creatures and consigning the unsuccessful ones to the bone yards.
The Animaris Gubernare had a rolling plastic stomach on the ground which stored compressed air but turned out to be an evolutionary dead-end since it was too heavy for the animal to move around with. Herds of the creatures grew smaller as he began fine tuning senses on individual animals. A working sand feeler was the highlight of the Animaris Protinus, while the Animaris Adulari used a wagging nose and tail to help it sense the hard sand it could walk on.
"They are blind and deaf and they have to navigate somehow," Jansen tells us. "You can do a lot with compressed air. They have a sort of tongue, which is a long tube and as soon as air pressure is in there, it can feel if the sand is even or uneven, i.e. if it is hard sand or soft sand. It steers away from the soft sand, towards the sea."
Source: Gizmag
Source: Gizmag
