Theo Jansen – The Art of Creating Creatures

“I would like to…tell you about a project which was started about 16 years ago. And it’s, uh about…making new forms of life.”

Come on. I mean, how can you not want to watch a video that starts like that. Obviously this Dutch artist is fucking crazy because he’s talking about creating living creatures out of things like plastic bottles and tubing. It’s just ripe for drive-by mockery.

Only…it’s not. You might start a little incredulous, but by the end, you’re captured in his web of imagination. He’s saying things that while they should may make no earthly sense…do.

Continuing the theme of art mimicking nature I started last week, Theo Jansen’s TED talk is an hour’s worth of brilliance in a ten minute bag. His inorganic, skeletal “lifeforms” are designed to move, react to the world around them, and even survive on their own; powered only by the forces of the natural world around them. He really stretches the realms of both your understanding of nature, your assessment of life, and the english language at times.

It’s difficult to describe, but I promise you’ll never look at the world around you the same way again.