The Engineering of the Strandbeest: How the Magnificent Mechanical Creatures Have Technologically Evolved

Life evolves, but machines are invented: this dichotomy hardly conflicts with what most of us have learned about biology and technology. But certain specimens roaming around in the world can blur that line — and in the curious case of the Strandbeesten, they really are roaming around. First assembled in 1990 by the Dutch artist Theo Jansen, a Strandbeest (Dutch for “beach beast”) is a kind of wind-powered kinetic sculpture designed to “walk” around the seaside in an organic-looking fashion. Jansen has made them not just ever larger and more elaborate over the decades, but also more stable and more resilient, with an eye toward their eventually outliving him.

Improving the Strandbeest has been a long process of trial and error, as explained in the Veritasium video above. Jansen’s process especially resembles biological evolution in that the changes he makes to his creations tend to be retained or discarded in accordance with the degree to which they assist in adaptation to their sandy, watery environment.

Getting them to walk upright in the sand was hard enough, and ultimately required computer modeling to determine just the right angles at which to connect their joints. But the joints themselves have also demanded improvement, given that the rigors of a Strandbeest’s “life” necessitate both flexibility and durability.

We’ve featured Jansen and his Strandbeesten more than once here on Open Culture, but this new video reveals another dimension of his lifelong project: to keep them from walking into the sea. This challenge has led him to build “brains” that detect when a Strandbeest has drawn too close to the water. Constructed with simple mechanical valves, these systems are reminiscent of not just the neurons in our own heads, but also of the collections of binary switches that, assembled in much greater numbers, have technologically evolved into the basis of the digital devices that we use every day. While a computer can theoretically last forever, a living creature can’t — and nor, so far, can a Strandbeest. But now that Jansen has discovered their “genetic code,” inventors all over the world have already begun their own work propagating this diverse, captivating species worldwide.

Related content:

Behold the Strandbeest, the Mechanical Animals That Roam the Beaches of Holland