Cause&EffectBallsAway · PlayBall

Machines of magnificent inefficiency, in honour of Rube Goldberg.

Cause&Effect — Kinetic sculpture (Rube Goldberg machines)

Cause&Effect, 2018. BallsAway commissioned for the Microsoft BlueHat conference.

I — The workConcept

Cause&Effect is our ongoing homage to Rube Goldberg. His machines embody everything we believe in: they are pure experience and joy, and absolutely impractical. BallsAway is a physical-digital marble run built with all the spectacle a marble run deserves. PlayBall is a mechanical apparatus for the front of a school that chose play as its specialty — a celebration of how simple it is to understand a contraption, and how hard it is to make one actually work.

II — DocumentationPlates

Cause&Effect — documentation, plate 1 — Plate 01

Cause&Effect — documentation, plate 2 — Plate 02

Cause&Effect — documentation, plate 3 — Plate 03

III — The storyMaking & meaning

We build these machines for commissions, for workshops and sometimes simply for ourselves. A Rube Goldberg machine is the most honest image of the creative process we know: a long chain of fragile decisions, each of which must succeed for the next to happen, ending in something gloriously small.

I — The workConcept

II — DocumentationPlates

III — The storyMaking & meaning

IV — Moving imageFilms (1)