In this movie filmed in the beautiful “De Ploeg”, a former factory designed by Gerrit Rietveld on the outskirts of Eindhoven, the ringing of an alarm clock triggers a chain of events that opens umbrellas, spins paper windmills, starts a fire and releases a set of parachuting toy animals.
Dutch design studio HeyHeyHey originally constructed the machine, named Melvin, during Dutch Design Week 2010 but reassembled this improved version a year later.
Melvin the Magical Mixed Media Machine (or just Melvin the Machine) is best described as a Rube Goldberg machine with a twist.
Besides doing what Rube Goldberg machines do best – performing a simple task as inefficiently as possible, often in the form of a chain reaction – Melvin has an identity.
Actually, the only purpose of this machine is promoting its own identity!
Photos courtesy of HeyHeyHey
