In 1985, Swiss artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss spent two years designing an elaborate machine with bouncing tires that set off fireworks.
But unlike a normal Rube Goldberg machine, which uses a long chain of reactions that ultimately completes a simple task, Fischli and Weiss' machine doesn't produce anything.
The wild contraption is the star of their 1987 super-8 film, "The Way Things Go,"on display until April 27 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City.
The 30-minute film, made of about 22 shots inside a warehouse, is mesmerizing. If you look closely, you'll notice it's not continuous and the same objects pop up again, the exhibition's curator Nat Trotman tells Tech Insider.
The duo used hundreds of objects that they found lying near the warehouse. The old tires, for instance, were from an auto repair shop around the corner. Fischli and Weiss devoted two years to make the film, spending multiple weeks on each move.
"It [the time they spent] depended on how unruly the objects were, like if the tires would bounce the wrong way," Trotman says. "They asked everyday objects to do things they were not meant to do."
The museum has been working on this exhibition, called "How to Work Better," for the past seven years, Trotman says. After Weiss passed away in 2012, the retrospective took on new importance. The exhibition features over 300 photos, sculptures, and installations by the artists, including a polyurethane replica display of 164 objects like m&ms, paint cans, and milk cartons..jpg)
Fischli and Weiss collaborated for 33 years, working on many projects as their alter egos, "Bear and Rat." Like the machine in "The Way Things Go," many of their pieces took an absurdly long time (the display above took 19 years) to make, but that was the point.
"It looks like someone was working and forgot to finish it, or it was abandoned," Trotman says. "You get the feeling they were wasting time."
Take a look at a clip from Fischli and Weiss'"The Way Things Go" below:
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