Creative Kinetics: Making Mechanical Marvels in Wood
Artist, inventor, and longtime author Rodney Frost is known for wacky, whimsical woodworking books that encourage readers to experiment. With his newest, most creative volume yet, he provides an introduction to the wild and whimsical world of kinetic art—art that moves. Using plenty of informative sidebars and dynamic illustrations, Frost teaches the basic techniques in his own inimitable style, beginning with easy, fun projects like weather vanes and mobiles powered by air currents alone. Then it’s on to simple toys you manipulate with strings, and art mechanized by levers, cranks, cams, and cogs.
Added by: Maria | Karma: 3098.81 | Periodicals | 25 January 2010
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Smithsonian Magazine chronicles the arts, environment, sciences and popular culture of the times. Each issues explores the frontiers of science, illuminates the marvels of the natural world, and takes a fresh look at the arts, history and the environment.
Manmade marvels of the later medieval courts—animated golden birds, mechanical angels, and other fantastic machines—were not merely amusing distractions, but also agents of social negotiation and political import. In Manmade Marvels, the dancing metal peacocks, animated statuary, and spectacular illusions of the romance tradition are disembedded from traditional literary representation as supernatural fictions, and situated in the political culture where mechanical marvels were fashioned to delight courts, garner prestige, and symbolize power.
