like many young boys in the sixties, one of my favourite toys was
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meccano was invented in 1901 in england by frank hornby 
and manufactured by the british company, meccano ltd, between 1908 and 1980. .jpg)
it is now owned by a japanese company and made in france and china.
the bbc recently ran a piece on a meccano skyscraper erected in new york. fully 65 feet (20 metres) tall and made entirely of meccano pieces, the building required the labour of 30 people and a whole heap of screwdrivers. weighing in at a whopping sixteen thousand pounds or seven thousand two hundred and fifty kilograms, the structure is the creative brain child of artist chris burden.
an excellent overview of this latest project by chris that also includes some background to the world of “erector sets” can be read here.
a really intriguing video collection of some of chris’s older installations . . .
more recently . . . the flying steamroller!
and my own favourite . . . urban light . . .
and finally, here’s some footage of the meccano skyscraper. . .
2 comments:
I can certainly relate to "Where does all stuff come from?" cupboard-cleaning. I've been in this house for 30-some years now. You can only imagine what some of my cupboards look like, altho a couple of them don't look as spider-webbed/neglected as they did just a few months back. Yuck! I really need to 'get back on it'.
chucking stuff out of cupboards - especially the kitchen cupboards which is where i've been most of yesterday and today - is one of my favourite summer sports. the kitchen cupboards are filled with bits of this and chunks of that, and all coated in a lovely patina consisting of the vapourized elements of all that has been cooked since they were last cleaned!
i especially love the potato chip and cookie/treats cupboards which are primarily frequented by my children who leave enough crumbs to feed any visiting family of mice and several subsequent mouse generations, not to mention the almost-finished packagesthey leave jammed in a nasty little heap at the back. steven
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