Mechanical Principles

I was fortunate enough to get some time recently to visit MoMA during a work trip where I diverted into a few days in Manhattan. In one of the rooms was a series of works which drew on mechanical engineering and design, whether it be drawings or short films like this one from the silent era. As others have said here this is a very simple film in some ways because for 10 minutes we are shown a series of gears working together. We don't see the bigger picture of the machine they are part of, because the camera focuses very much on the individual sets of teeth and cogs moving in their set rotation. We maybe have 20 seconds or so on each one, so over 10 minutes you see a lot.

It is a very simple film but I found it hypnotic and very satisfying. I'm not a practical man so I appreciate the engineering behind making things work and the gear mechanisms here are beautiful. Some of them are very complex with variety of teeth and shapes of the cogs while others are very traditional, two round cogs with interlocking teeth – simple but still beautiful in their precision as they fit together. Maybe it doesn't work as well on Youtube as it does in the quiet dark space of a gallery, but for me I really loved this. That said 10 minutes was probably enough and it wasn't perfect – the proximity of the camera to some of the mechanisms occasionally meant it was hard to see what was occurring, but for the most part the approach is simple and the camera allows enough view and enough time to appreciate the mechanical beauty of each repeating pattern of operation – precise and perfect.