Engineering Art

Engineering Art

Talk

Past event

Philip Carter Family Auditorium

FREE

Dr Shayne Gooch from the University of Canterbury's School of Engineering discusses the unseen forces behind Len Lye’s kinetic sculptures, the special relationship between the university's engineering department and the Len Lye Foundation, and the challenges of bringing some of Len’s larger sculptures to life.

For over 20 years the University of Canterbury's School of Engineering has provided opportunities for students to study Lye’s work and, in turn, bring about solutions to the challenges of scaling Lye’s sculptures to the size he intended. Dr Shayne Gooch has been a Len Lye enthusiast for many years, following research begun in 1996 that saw the fruition of Lye’s Blade at a scale previously unachieved. This work was given the name Big Blade.