Theo Jansen

I am into advertising to some extent and while going through some videos I came across a BMW ad featuring Theo Jansen’s work:

Right away you can see something other-worldly in this brief glimpse of what he is doing. Jansen calls these creations called Strandbeests. After some exploring I found that he has created a considerable number of these “things”. They are powered by stored energy from wind,as you can see in this BBC excerpt:

One creation in particular that I like is Animaris Rhinoceros. If you look closely you can see it is being pushed to get it started, I think it may be too heavy to begin on its own with the wind:

Here is a feature on TED where there is some explanation of how the energy works:

I really like these creations because they mix engineering with creativity, two fields that are often unfortunately exclusive. Recreating what is seen in nature is what humans do with technology. Obviously there are no insects that move quite like these creations and that’s why this so great, to take inspiration from nature and make something unique, original and forward thinking is very inspiring.