The Corkscrew, Rob Higgs

This is a short film where Rob Higgs describes himself and his intentions by his work. It focuses on his piece called The Corkscrew. The Corkscrew is a mechanical sculpture made of about 300 pieces which were found by Higgs and cast in bronze before assembled together. The Corkscrew emerges from a cabinet as well as opening a bottle of wine and pouring the first glass using its own power. Below I've posted a video which shows how it does all of this. I also like this quote i found from Rob Higgs,

"I would like my work to inspire people to consider the general pointlessness and excessiveness of the majority of man-made things in our world and to smile at our tireless pursuit of happiness through the invention of ingenious nonsense."

I like the idea of some huge mechanical operation used to do a task that everyone just takes for granted. Its just an over-the-top method of dealing with a simple task. The huge chain reaction of events is such a build up of suspense for something so simple. I like of a huge operation you just to go "All that for that" at the end. This is something I want to follow up and look into for my self initiated project this year.

The Nutcracker (Eden Project), Rob Higgs

The Nutcracker is a 10 meter high mechanical structure designed and made by Rob Higgs. He has taken an easy everyday task and come up with an extravagant mechanical solution. It is a fantastic structure made from scrapped objects Higgs found and assembled. The purpose of the machine is described next to the piece and says,

"A sledgehammer to crack a nut"

This is the over the top nature of the piece. All that mechanism and all that time just to crack a nut but apparently it is a demonstration of over-processing plants. This isn't the part I like though, that is the huge chain reaction of evens to end with something so insignificant. I like this idea and I'm going to look into it as well as chain reactions for my Self Initiated Project.