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For Burning Man, artist Duane Flatmo built an enormous octopus automaton called El Pulpo Mechanico. It shoots fire from its feet. So, you know, that’s just a bit different from the mechanical octopodes that you encounter normally.
Artist’s Website -via Make
Previously: Duane Flatmo’s Kinetic Sculpture
Jon Sarriugarte, a metal sculptor, and Kyrsten Mate Comoglio, an Oscar-nominated sound effects designer, have been previously featured on Neatorama for their fanciful snail car built out of an old Volkswagen Beetle. Their newest work is the Electrobite. It’s a vehicle inspired by the trilobite — a creature that went extinct 245 million years ago. It debuted at the most recent Burning Man festival:
The hand-tooled exoskeleton is mounted on the drive mechanism of an old electric wheelchair. At night, undermounted blue lights give it an otherworldly glow. Jon says, “People would walk up and ask if it was remote controlled. When I pointed out the leather seat and the joy stick they couldn’t believe you could drive it. Lots of smiling faces when we let them try it out.”
Link via Boing Boing
Paul Elkins built this lightweight travel trailer for his trip to the Burning Man festival. It has a roof-mounted wind turbine for electical power, as well as a solar cooker and water heater. It weighs only 100 pounds dry, so he can haul it around with his bicycle:
The skin is 1/4″ flutted plastic like whats used for election signs. This was riveted and screwed onto 3/4″ square aluminum tubing salvaged from an old satellite dish. The base was made of 2×2 fir. The 30″ square door frame, made of 1×2′s was skrewed to the side panel, cut on the sides and bottom. The upper part was left uncut to act as a hinge. The bed hinges in a lounge attitude. On the outside resides an herb flower box, a urinal funnel (sanicans were a ways off) and 13″ wheel barrel wheels on a 1/2″ axle mounted with 1/2″ square tubing made up the running gear. I used 3/4″ steel for the tow bar, A recycled card table for the corner camper supports, and misc this and that. It’s whatever I had kicking around at the time, and that’s how anyone would have to do it if worst came to worst.
There are many pictures at the link.
WebUrbanist has a great collection of 15 neat school buses turned into artwork. My favorite is the one seen above based on the catbus seen in the anime movie My Neighbor Totoro. This cool art car was one of the many seen at Burning Man 2002.
