Joy Riding

Joy Rides! from Chris Luomanen on Vimeo.

Here's a blast from the past. These are projects I did for my graduate thesis at Stanford.

These Joy Rides are a series of objects that create unexpected, funny, thrilling, perplexing or scary (but benign) experiences when you play with them. Centipede Board is a skateboard that you turn by leaning forwards and back, not just side to side. The Devil's Shopping Cart is an uncontrollable vehicle. The more you try to control it, the more it goes out of control. The Human Catapult is designed to build nervous anticipation without real danger. And Palindrome is a land proa--a craft that is symetrical from front to back, not side to side. So instead of tacking through the wind, you just stop, reverse the rig and take off in reverse--always sitting on the windward side. Its my 21st century walap.

I couldn't show a couple of the other projects I did, because I tested them on preschoolers. So my bouncing disc shaped teeter totter and jump powered orange juicer are still back in the archives. Damned videography agreements.