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Posts Tagged ‘plastic beasts’

A Flying Dutchman’s Plastic Beasts

Text by Vijai

May 23, 2011

Dutch engineer/artist Theo Jensen is like something out of a modern-day Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale. While his colleagues in Netherlands are exploring ways to create test-tube meat that can be grown in a laboratory from animal stem cells, Jensen has been creating massive plastic beasts to survive on the windy coasts of his native country. These artificial strandbeasts, are semi-intelligent, and mechanically built to move away from the wind, to store energy in a ‘wind’ stomach, and even have muscles, which can strengthen over time. While the idea seems wacky, it has caught on as other scientists in biology and computing are creating ‘evolving’ machines that can learn from their mistakes and improve without outside interference.

And, since Jensen’s creating Beasts, not microscopic forms of life as Craig Venter did recently, his creations have made a splash. His terrors were let loose in Trafalgar Square, London, in 2006, and he recently gave a speech at Google’s Ted Talks. Check him out on Strandbeest