A Visit to Museum Tinguely
This week, I finally got the chance to visit the Museum Tinguely in Basel, Switzerland. It’s an amazing place with endless inspiration for tinkering projects.
Jean Tinguely was a Swiss artist and tinkerer who created many kinetic sculptures that continue to inspire the blending of art, science, and technology. The collection of work contains elements of scribbling machines, automata, sound contraptions and chain reactions. In the museum, you can see everything from small rectangular kinetic canvases to giant machines that you can literally walk through. Here are a few highlights:
In the first rooms, we saw some of the first mechanical scribbling machines that move a marker in a chaotic manner to produce a unique artwork. These were built by Tinguely starting in the 1950s and demonstrated to adoring crowds. One thing that I really love is that both the machine and the drawing are unique and beautiful.
The intricacies of the metal gears, the offset weights of the motors and the levers that trigger noise makers provide endless possibilities for new project ideas.
The largest space in the museum hosted some monumental works that periodically activated for a visual and auditory spectacle. I was really curious to examine the sound machines after recent collaborations with the Tinkering Studio. The variety of instruments and activators powered by these sculptures could suggest some new experiments.
The giant art pieces make use of lots of humorous elements like garden gnomes, fake ferns and toy bobsleds. The combination of these everyday materials with more industrial elements relate to a tinkering philosophy of using what you have around for exploration.
In the entrance there’s a giant sculpture painted entirely black in front of a light box, suggesting even more possibilities for combining light play with automata. Outside there were fountains and sculptures that moved.
Besides the themes and topics of the art pieces in the museum, I was struck by the process that Tinguely followed and how that also provides motivation. He pursued many collaborations with other artists, notably Nikki de Saint Phalle, which seemed to invigorate the work with a sense of possibility, showing the value in working with others who have very different visions or styles.
As well I got the sense of him saying “yes” to all possibilities, even not knowing how they would work. Tinguely created explosive works in the desert of Nevada, backdrops for ballets and giant walkthrough sculptures the size of a warehouse. I could see that his attitude was why not try something new even if the results are uncertain.
I’m looking forward to continue to discover the work of this artist. The next place I want to go is the Espace Jean Tinguely and Nikki de Saint Phalle in Fribourg, Switzerland. And I’m sure I’ll continue to reflect about how these ideas can be integrated into tinkering that we do with learners.