Well, for me it’s not really important. I just do what I do and people call it ‘art’ or people call it ‘engineering’, and for me it’s just something which I don’t see the difference. For me, it’s exactly the same thing.

 

It just happened by itself. It wasn’t that I said, “Okay, I’m going to use my physics studies now for my art”. I got a passion for physics again after a few years of painting, and the whole fascination for the technical stuff came back by building a flying saucer which could really fly. That was at the beginning of the 80s – it was about 4 metres in diameter and I flew it over the town.

 

I write a column for a newspaper here every fortnight, and the Strandbeest [beach animals] were one of the columns in the newspaper. But for half a year, nothing happened and I didn’t do anything with it, until I decided one afternoon to come to this shop to buy some of these tubes. And at the end of the afternoon I decided to give one year to the tubes. And then it really became a part of my life.

 

 

They are becoming better now. The toes – I must say – the leg, and the toes. The toes are at the end of the leg, and the shape of that is changing now. I’m getting rid of the zip ties, because they give up after two or three years. And without zip ties it’s a new stage.

 

The ‘stomach’ is the spare of energy they have. I use PET bottles –I pump the bottles up with air, and that becomes the spare energy the may need in case the wind falls away on the beach.

 

Now the 'brains', once you have fresh air, you can make little pumps, and also with toggles you can make switches. So instead of electronics, it’s using fresh air to make decisions. So with this system you can make step counters and sensors so [the animals] can feel the water of the sea, and also come back – so that if they touch the sea, they will step away from it. So they always know where the sea is.

 

There’s could also be a tide mechanism, which will run parallel to the tides so [the animals] will know when the water level comes up. I’m talking about it as if it’s already there, but I’m still working on it. So it’s not really completed yet. The evolution goes on.

 

Not close. I still have to save [the creatures] every five minutes. It’s getting better, but very slowly. They cannot really stand the elements in the winter, because the winter is quite horrible here – lots of storms and rain and snow in this country. It will be a few years before they can stay permanently on the beach. I got to the beach in spring for a few weeks with the animals. Normally I work on an artificial beach, which is inland – just a piece of sand of about twenty metres.

 

Well, I hope that people will become part of my world, that they will feel like they are participating in the project. They seem to understand what keeps me busy. They become part of that. And that’s very nice to see – people are really excited and want to follow me.