A kit of parts both playful and educational, this cool set of components lets children design simple movement sequences and test various kinetic strategies.

LINKKI features three motors – for full rotation, limited rotation and wifi connectivity – tied into a peg board where various pieces can be plugged in to create endless combinations (particularly once you start hacking your own pieces from scratch).

“The flat mechanism makes the design process with which engineering such as mechanics, robotics, electronics, and model making is involved feel like just drawing on the paper: fast, easy, and intuitive,” writes its creator. “Flat parts also enables users to make their own parts with on-the-shelf material such as cardboard—that is, it’s easy to hack and open-ended.”

The toy kit is intended in part to engender interest in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) by engaging it as a kind of play and making discoveries more intuitive, casual and entertaining for kids.

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Hair dryers provide the driving force behind this mesmerizing set of simple-but-beautiful installation art projects by Antoine Terrieux, a magician and juggler with an eye for repurposing everyday objects.

Presented last year at the Maison Des Jonglages (House of Juggling) in La Courneuve, France, this series of kinetic pieces shows how simple materials can create experiential art that lasts effectively forever. Paper airplanes circle over a series of blowers in one scene, a record spins and bounces endlessly in another while a string dances in the air in yet another.

His performances, light on drama and heavy on humor, incorporate similar elements, in illustrated in one of his stage shows, segments of which are shown above. The outfits alone make the video worth watching, so at least skip through some scenes to see for yourself!

The post Perpetual Motion: Kinetic Artworks Driven by Hair Dryers first appeared on Gajitz.

Designed to unfold like a hanging flower, much like wild plants close and open to defend themselves, these dazzling fixtures come to life and morph through a series of forms in fantastic succession.

Dubbed Shylights by Studio Drift, the fractal shapes created during their metamorphosis is not unlike nature’s own nyctinasty (the circadian rhythmic nastic movement of higher plants in response to the onset of darkness.).

Perhaps most remarkably, the process has a vertical component to it as well – each of these faux flowers falls 30 feet as it shifts shape, coming right down at you in large atrium spaces where installed (in this case inside a museum).

The post Shylights: Kinetic Fractal Light Fixtures Fall Open & Bloom first appeared on Gajitz.

Like it or not, we’re all just a species of primates lucky enough to have evolved into creatures with highly developed brains. Lest we forget our roots – and our speculative future – Argentinian art group DOMA created Involucion Primate, a simple but elegant sculpture.

The installation depicts our rise from primitive primates to the modern human forms we take today. But it then continues to illustrate our eventual devolution back to a more primitive form. Small black figures march along a revolving belt, creating a never-ending parade of evolution and devolution.

At the midpoint of the belt’s travel across the top of the sculpture, a light illuminates one figure at a time. In the right conditions, this creates a rather beautiful shadow display of the sculpture’s primate subjects, marching one after the other through the inescapable cycle of changes.

The post The Human Factor: Sculpture Sees Homo Sapiens Rise + Fall first appeared on Gajitz.

The NYC-based collective Proxy Design Studio is “an innovation-focused design firm that works across a range of scales and platforms.” This is the slogan you’re greeted with upon visiting their website, and it quickly becomes apparent, as projects in the fields of design, sustainability, research and construction are front and center. One of their impressive smaller-scale projects is the Mechaneu, a 3D-printed toy.

Mechaneu v1 is a loosely ball-shaped, gear-based kinetic system with interactive parts. It’s essentially a complex scheme of gears, in which when one is turned, the sphere showcases the cause-effect principle that drives cog-based gear systems. Spin one, the rest move into action, working on multiple senses (the “mesmerizing” visuals and the “tactile experience” feel.)

Important features of the Mechaneu are strong plastic material, 64 interlocking gears and no required assembly. The fun little gizmo also has the highest amount of detail that can be used in commercial printing, and its webpage very haughtily expounds: “The structure pushes the limits of most commercial print services. Mechaneu v1 is a limited production art object that will simultaneously push forward and exemplify the current epoch of 3D printing.” Big words for a little object.

The post 3D-Printed Mechanical ‘Toy’ Is the Cutting Edge of Design first appeared on Gajitz.