Machine with Concrete
September 23rd, 2009I’ve found the “Machine with Concrete” by Arthur Ganson in the comments of Slow Revolution, thanks Marc. It is actually a very similar piece, but Machine with Concrete is even more extreme. A motor is connected to 12 gears, each one of them slows down the speed of the motor by 1/50th. So when to motor is turning at 200 RPM, the last gear will need two trillion years to make a full turn. The last gear is actually embedded in concrete to illustrate the fact that we will never see it move anyway. What a way to reduce energy.
September 23rd, 2009 at 5:21 pm
It’s interesting to think about the fact that these machines will effectively die off before ever affecting the last cog in the chain… That the immutability of the last cog is eternal, but the movement of the machine and other cogs is what wears them down to their breaking point.
It’s sure to piss off the Green Team, though. Unless it’s running on solar power and smug.
September 24th, 2009 at 4:55 am
Kottke linked to this a while ago, I don’t know how I remember it.
He portrayed it as a concrete drill, though, which I find even more … well, awesome.
http://kottke.org/09/01/a-conceptual-drill