Whoooooo hurt you? Photo by James Rambin.
Austin Proper, the downtown Austin condo and hotel tower still under construction at 600 West Second Street near Shoal Creek and the rest of the redeveloped Green Water Treatment Plant site, already has its first two permanent residents — and they’re owls. Two 10-foot owls at the corner of West Second and Nueces Streets, to be exact:
Just in case the persistent urban legend about the Frost Bank Tower wasn’t enough for you, now downtown Austin’s got a little Bohemian Grove of its own. Hey, which one of you guys is Moloch? Image: NAPA
It’s certainly a more striking work of public art than those big concrete dog leavings over by the new Central Library, but what’s going on here? Called Kempelen’s Owls, the two sculptures are a collaborative work between the City of Austin’s Art in Public Places program and Massachusetts-based studio New American Public Art.
Photo by James Rambin.
Kempelen’s Owls, inspired by the 18th-century robotics of Wolfgang Von Kempelen, will be an interactive sculpture that fosters curiosity. Two Texan great horned owls . . . will perch atop dodecahedrons (12 sided geometric shapes) and silently observe surrounding passers by. The interactive features of the work are hidden, awaiting discovery by visitors who can activate them to trigger movement in the owls.
— City of Austin Cultural Arts Division
Yes, you’re reading that correctly — the owls, spooky glowing eyes and all, are equipped with hidden mechanisms allowing them to turn their heads and stare at you. Just in time for Halloween, right?
Here’s a very complex article about some of the technology enabling this extremely interesting and mildly unsettling feature, and below you’ll find a video from the artists about the design and fabrication of the owls — they’re made from “layered metal and other composite materials,” per the studio:
The installation is also the first in the city’s Art in Public Places collection to be fully open-sourced under a creative commons license, meaning in theory you have all the resources available to build one of these terrifying things yourself.
Photo by James Rambin.
Here’s a full 3D model of the work from computer-aided design software firm Autodesk, one of the project’s main sponsors — we’re just gonna scroll it around a little and call it a day, but feel free to start putting one together in your garage if the design really speaks to you. Your neighbors will love this thing.
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