The harvesting machine whirs to life. Mechanical arms extend and retract, rusty cogs knuckle past each other and greasy chains creak on an endless loop. Despite a flurry of clockwork motion, the machinery is immobile. That’s because these spare combine parts have been repurposed as contemporary art, reassembled as interactive music makers, and relocated to the gallery floor. The “Combine Project” is the brainchild of Steven White, an Ontario-based visual artist profiled by Musicworks. White got the idea to convert an obsolete artifact of our agricultural past into a collection of fanciful kinetic sculptures when he and his wife moved to some property in rural Ontario. There they found the farm equipment—specifically a hulking, abandoned 1964 Allis-Chalmers All-Corp combine harvester. Sprockets, gears and valves on many of the pieces are interactive, and when you crank them, the sculptures produce an eerie, mechanical kind of music. Here are a few of White's creations and a clip featuring “Molecular Roulette,” a sculpture that looks and works like a bizarre, 6-foot-long music box. (Right-click the link and select "Save Link As" to download an MP3 of White’s machines in motion.)

"Happy Apple Tree" is a kinetic sculpture made from the odd parts of abandoned farm equipment by Canadian visual artist Steven White.

Made from a segmented drive-shaft cover, "Brian's Arc" is modeled after a human spine in a resting position.

A monstrous piece called "Spider Bark."

"Insect Variation," named for its structural likeness to a grasshopper, conveys the tension between technology and the natural world.

White wrote in Musicworks that "Tooth Organ," pictured above, "reuses a crank, two chains, several gears, and graduated metal tines from the combine to produce a sonic mashup that sounds like a blend of a home radiator pinging and a tin cup being rattled on metal jail-cell bars."

Source: Musicworks

Photos courtesy of Steven White. Audio courtesy of Musicworks.

Take a peek at downtown Chicago’s newest street sculpture nestled in the socket of State and Van Buren streets. "Eye" is a 30-foot-tall fiberglass eyeball on display through the end of October. Sculptor Tony Tasset modeled the piece after his own eye—only it's 1,000 times bigger and infinitely creepier. He spent six months constructing its various parts in Sparta, Wisconsin. Of the building process, Tasset told the Chicago Tribune that “the final step [was] the glossy coat, which makes it really wet and gross and nasty.”

(Thanks, Good.)

Source: Chicago Tribune

Sometimes the news needs art. And there is perhaps no better art to illustrate the implosion of the American auto giants than Karl Biewald's Slow Inevitable Death of American Muscle. It's a completely mesmerizing slow-motion car crash, where two American muscle cars are squeezed together over a period of six days to simulate a head on collision. I suggest you watch the sped-up footage of the crash to the sound of General Motors CEO G. Richard Wagner getting grilled (ahem) on Capitol Hill.

(Thanks,  Things .) 

I get lots of unsolicited visual arts submissions (keep ‘em coming, links to online images are preferred), many involving the use of recycled materials, but this one really caught my eye. Brian Mock  creates amazing sculptures from 100% recycled materials (discarded Xerox machines, sewing machines, clocks, tractors, escalators, garden tools, etc.). Lots of folks use recycled materials in their artwork, which is awesome, but few do it in such a refined manner. His sculptures have tons of cool details, and are meticulously crafted. Brian has a solo show coming up at the Gallery of Functional Art  in Los Angeles, June 27th-August 10th. Check him out if you are in the area, I’m sure these pieces are incredible to see in person.