TechArt
TechArt
Text Annebelle de Bruijn
© Sam Rentmeester
How does technology inspire artists? In this feature, an artist explains.
Volkert van der Wijk
Kinetic sculptures
Artist and TU Delft guest researcher Volkert van der Wijk creates ingenious kinetic sculptures. Human-like figures, for example, that harbour the expressiveness of despair, intimacy and other human emotions in their movement. He also makes artworks inspired by balance. The latter is no coincidence. Van der Wijk received his PhD in 2014 on dynamic balance of fast-moving robotics.
The challenge for Van der Wijk lies in creating exactly the kind of movement that evokes interaction between viewer and sculpture. Take his bronze sculpture ‘Hug’ where, in one position, two pyramid shapes depict attraction and, in the other, the intimacy of an embrace. “At an exhibition in Leiden I was told how impressive it was that such cold and heavy material radiates so much fragility and warmth. This is what I’m after,” he says. When he has an idea for a sculpture, he combs scientific literature for mechanisms he might apply, and he phones other scientists. Science and art often reinforce each other. “Sometimes, as a scientist, I stumble upon a mechanism that perfectly fits an idea, but similarly it happens that I publish articles based on applications from my art.” For example, he published about the artwork the Taaie Tiller (tough lifter) in Constructeur magazine. For this ‘Sisyphus Machine’, which lifts a rock from the water then drops it again and so on for all eternity, Van der Wijk discovered how to bypass the dead points of the four-bar mechanism.
The Sisyphus Machine was the brainchild of journalist Henk Hofland. Van der Wijk and Hofland got to know each other in 2002 when Hofland was a guest writer at TU Delft. Hofland became a friend, source of inspiration and a springboard. “He opened up a new world to me. I had always made art. But thanks to him, I learnt that my art has an audience. In short, it really started for me in Delft.”