Mechanical Snail - my master degree in sculpture - 2010

Hi guys,
Back in 2010 I finished the Master course in Sculpture at the University of Fine Arts here
in Bucharest. For my final exam I had to prepare something more elaborate, and to somehow combine all the knowledge that I had gathered during these 2 years of hard work and studying, into one masterpiece! Lol
As you can see from the pictures below I created an entire cycle of masterpieces! :))

The idea behind them all started back in 2007 when I was in my 3rd year of college and I made a snail with some sort of propellers from stone and glass. The idea appealed to me and I decided to continue it for my master degree.
As we all know, snails are tiny little creatures that aren't very agile. I mean,... they are really, really, really slow. Just like us humans in a way. Hey!,... who has the time to run nowadays??? :))
So I took these small and slow living things and gave them superpowers!!! As you can see from the pictures I made six of them. A really big one, just to make sure that the jury would be pleased with my effort, two smaller but fairly complex and three really small. I gave them superpowers just because I wanted to bring them closer to our rank/status. The technological advancements in our modern society, the speed and the goals we have achieved, all define our day to day lives. Though we have these amazing things all around us, gadgets and smartphones, an amazing speed at which we can travel and instant access to information, we are also becoming more and more sedentary, more idle and lazy,... we're chair warmers. We actually move our bodies just as little and as slowly as a snail does.

Materials and working process
For the five small snails I used all sorts of old objects that I could have found around my house,...like clocks, computer parts, fishing reels, cut out parts of plexiglass and so on. Luckily, I managed to buy this all-around multitool from Dremel, which literally saved my life on this project.

For the Big one,... well it's pretty obvious. Two 16 inch alloy rims were “glued” together and covered with one tire sectioned in two, forming the shell. From this shell I bound several metallic bars that would sustain the actual body of the snail. After I placed them in the right position, I started to weld cut out metal sheets and to attach different plastic prefabs to give the impression that the snail has an internal mechanism that is actually working. Unfortunately, it doesn't! :( The lack of time and money really held me back on this project. But hey,... maybe a day will come when I'll revive this beast under a different form and shape, … and ride it in the sunset.

Hope you'll like them all!

Bogdan.















No comments: