day 3. what can this body do?

Objective: Explore possible movements of the object by trying it out with their own bodies. Start making the kinetic sculpture. Trying the linkage mechanism experiment with design.

Day three begins with a question posed by the philosopher Baruch Spinoza: What can a body do? Rather than approaching this question theoretically, participants explore it through direct physical experience.

The aim of this day is to move from the individual human body toward the emerging body of the sculpture, translating physical principles discovered through embodied exploration into the kinetic objects participants will begin constructing.

1. Embodied Exploration

The day starts with a somatic investigation led by Marta. Participants explore the physical principles that organize their own bodies: weight, gravity, balance, and momentum.

Through simple exercises, they observe how movement begins and propagates through the body. For example, the head is one of the heaviest parts of the body. What happens when the head initiates movement? How does the rest of the body reorganize when the head tilts forward, backward, or from side to side?

By exploring these questions, participants begin to notice how small shifts generate chain reactions across the body. The body reveals itself as a system of hinges, counterbalances, rotations, and suspended weight—principles that closely resemble those found in mechanical structures.

This exploration creates a bridge between bodily mechanics and machine mechanics, preparing participants to translate physical sensations into kinetic design.

3. Material and Camera Exploration

Participants then return to the materials they collected during the previous days in the scrapyard. Instead of immediately building with them, they begin by observing them closely.

Each participant selects an object or material they feel drawn to and examines it through the camera by zooming into its textures and surfaces. At this scale, the object becomes less recognizable as a functional part and more like a landscape of form, density, and rhythm.

From these observations, participants develop movement responses with their bodies. They experiment with embodying the qualities of the material—rigidity, elasticity, vibration, tension, or fragility.

This exercise draws from Marta’s previous artistic research on “becoming,” an embodied practice inspired by the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze. In this approach, the body temporarily enters into a relationship with matter, allowing the qualities of a material to resonate through movement. Rather than representing the object, participants explore how the body can enter a process of transformation or affinity with the material.

The result is a feedback loop between material, perception, and bodily movement, where the properties of the object begin to suggest possible gestures and rhythms.

4. From Body to Object

In the final part of the day, participants begin translating these discoveries into mechanical experimentation using the objects they already collected.

Guided by Werner, they test motors and experiment with simple linkage mechanisms, exploring how rotation can be converted into other forms of movement. The aim is not to produce a finished sculpture yet, but to begin building kinetic prototypes that reflect the movement principles discovered earlier in the body.

To conclude the day, each participant writes a short manifesto or descriptive text answering the question once again:

5. What can this body do?

Here, the “body” refers not to the human body, but to the emerging body of the sculpture—a kinetic entity assembled from found materials. Through embodied exploration, visual observation, and mechanical experimentation, participants begin defining the movement logic and character of this new body.

Conceptual framework:

The conceptual thread of the workshop connects three perspectives on movement and bodies. The starting point is the question posed by Baruch Spinoza: What can a body do?—a philosophical inquiry into the capacities and relations that define a body beyond its fixed form. This idea was later expanded by Gilles Deleuze, who described processes of becoming as moments in which bodies enter into new relationships with other bodies, materials, and forces. In the context of the workshop, these ideas resonate strongly with the practice of Jean Tinguely, whose kinetic sculptures assembled discarded industrial parts into dynamic mechanical bodies with their own rhythms, gestures, and unpredictable behaviors. Together, these references frame the workshop’s approach: exploring how human bodies, materials, and machines can interact to produce new forms of movement and character.