00001.txt: Strandbeest

Dutch artist Theo Jansen makes animal-like contraptions out of PVC
tubing and sail material. A complex, wind powered mechanism makes them
"walk" across the strand, giving a strong impression of life. The tubing
construction makes them seem skeletal, but lifelike. The things looklike
giant insects, or else like highly articulated mammels. Jansen calls
them "Strandbeest" and he's been making them since 1990. Youtube has
many of Jansen's videos. 

I learned of the Strandbeest from a NYT op-ed piece about the definition
of life. The point was that with no clear cut division between life and
non-life, the concept is more a category of the human mind. Strandbeest
are certainly not alive in any accepted sense, but they have more
characteristics of life than some things we do thing of as living. 

They certainly don't have the capability as a population to evolve,
though, and that seems to be a big part of the NASA definition of
extraterrestial life.


2014-03-12