Art for Engineers

Heather from Cabinet of Wonders sent me a link to Max Chen's site Oily Cog. What a smorgasboard of loveliness! Take this great kinetic sculpture above, titled "Eclipse." In case you are unsure what it does...
It eclipses!

OK, I thought it was cool.

Alright, well how about this, "Astrolab"?

Front side has map of San Francisco. Only the bicycle lanes are shown (no Bay Bridge crossing). Back side has various components. Perimeter has a little prayer.

If this post seems to be very graphics heavy, and text light, well, that's because Oily Cog is that way. (Well, and I'm still fighting a head cold.) Max's stuff is one part steampunk, one part bikepunk, and one part mad tinkerer trying to physically transcend the limits between art, science, and engineering. Sheer genius, and my rantings would only diminish the simple elegance of this stuff.

OK, one more image to try and convince to check this site:

The sidecar leans with the bike, so it rides almost normally. I have carried over 200 pounds with it, and it has accompanied me on three Burningman Festivals. ... The urge to build a sidecar originated from a trip to mainland China as a boy. I saw a very young child riding inside a bamboo bicycle sidecar. Then I found and took home a really nice single sided hub from Cornell HEV. The rest is history.