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One artist that has consistently ranked among my favorites, is the American kinetic sculptor Arthur Ganson. Most of Ganson's works are machines, that move purely for the sake of moving, without an ulterior higher goal.
While seemingly simple machines, Ganson's work are a wild collection of playful experiments with motion. His work both operates on a simple, everyday scale as a universal scale. You won't, for example, find a summary of a mechanical view of the universe so apt, as Ganson's Machine with Roller Chain.
Ganson's work is not only interesting because of its unapologetic perpetual uselessness, but also because it's simply funny.
Take Machine with Concrete, which consists of a motor that rotates a gear connected to a number of gears that reduce the speed of rotation, moves so slow it would take 13.7 billion years to complete. This is so slow, Ganson embedded the final rotation in concrete. The front of the machine, however, hasn't noticed this fact and keeps turning unphased, its gears turning and twisting.
Ganson doesn't make a lot of media appearances, but when he does, from the way he talks about his work, it is very clear it comes from a playful, sincere and thoughtful place; connecting this very precise logical system with a certain fragility and genuity. Ganson showed me that you can make very interesting works - based on a wide variety of idea - by just having fun with the materials you work with. Ganson's is unpretentious, fun and interesting to look at and to me, those are very important qualities in creating art.