“The walls between art and engineering exists only in our minds.”

Theo Jansen is a Dutch kinetic sculptor who creates light weight, movable objects that are powered by the wind. He main creations seem to be these beautifully tragic animal skeletons which walk on their own along the beaches of Netherlands. What material does he use to fuel these creations? Cheap plastic tubes, nylon strings, adhesive tape, cable ties and a heck of a lot of mechanical experimentation to get the right walking stylistics.

In an interview with Wired, Jansen comments:

“Animals are machines as well,” said Jansen. “I was making animals with just the tubes because they were cheap but later on they turned out to be very helpful in making artificial life because they are very flexible and multifunctional as well. I see it now as a sort of protein — in nature, everything is almost made of protein and you have various uses of protein; you can make nails, hair, skin and bones. There’s a lot of variety in what you can do with just one material and this is what I try to do as well.”