I would like people to be a little bit amazed to figure out how they work to solve the problem of how it works.

My name is David Roy.

I'm a kinetic sculptor.

I've been doing it for in excess of 40 years.

Roy's kinetic sculptures are mesmerizing feat of artistry and engineering.

A single wind can provide hours of entertainment.

Some of them create tension, but some of them are just something you can sit like you would watch a fire and just get lost in the flames and he's made a lot of them over the years.

The different designs is over 300 in the number of pieces because they make additions is 7000, something like that.

Each one of Roy's pieces is entirely mechanically driven, no motors, no electronics.

And his degree in physics comes in handy when explaining how they work.

You start with an energy source.

I use a constant force spring.

Now, I initially started with a weight drive.

Each is controlled by what's called an escape mechanism.

A device that releases energy incrementally.

It's similar to what you might find inside a clock.

So the mechanism initially is locked so that the weight can't fall.

Spring can't unwind.

When that mechanism is unlocked, it releases a bit of energy, which in turn moves a second device, often a rotating wheel.

That device creates motion but it also re triggers the escape Mint releasing a bit more energy and restarting the cycle and that's the essence of an escape, Mint controlled release of energy that's self sustaining until it runs out of energy and you have to wind it up and nothing is perpetual.

There is a large group of people who say is a perpetual motion and of course I was schooled in physics and I know that that isn't possible.

So they're not one of the key laws of physics is the conservation of energy, which basically says the amount of energy you put into a system is exactly the amount you get out one way or another, the user puts energy in by winding them up and then the energy comes out in the motion, which is the part I want.

But another way is in the sounds that takes energy to create the sounds.

But most of it, a lot of it gets lost in heat due to friction where the things are rotating and rubbing.

Roy is tinkered with different mechanisms and materials to try to curtail some of the energy loss.

So that's where it appears perpetual only because I worked really hard to reduce friction and sound.

Roy has always had a strong grasp of the science and the mechanics behind his work, but he needed a little help with the artistry.

I mean, you can make a neat thing, but you have to make it work visually and that was probably the hardest for me to learn over the years.

And that was my, my mentor and tutor of my wife.

In fact, it was David's wife, Margie who sparked his initial interest in kinetic sculpture.

Margie was a sculpture major at Rhode Island School of Design and she made a project that is two cogs and wooden chain and she put it on the wall and she said this is my sculpture.

And I said you can make a machine and call it a sculpture.

And she looked at me and she said of course and I said okay, so it was that the idea that you could make wooden machines and call them sculpture that totally re channeled my creative ideas from the science world, the engineering world to the art world.

And it was all brand new and very exciting and what started as a hobby quickly became a full fledged business.

Most people and I have to admit I didn't think it was a long term thing, it was something we were doing because we could, we had no obligations and I was playing, I was having a great time decades later Roy is still making and selling kinetic sculptures and his continued passion is due to one thing I like to solve problems that I dream up.

I created the first sculptures and then they were noisy and annoying and I wanted to make him quiet.

So then I had to develop a mechanism that was quiet and he did in a piece called anticipation.

But the problem solving didn't stop there getting longer run times has been one of the challenges that I enjoy the first pieces they ran for 20 minutes, 25 minutes.

When I got that up to an hour, I thought I was in Nirvana and then it got 23 hours.

This is over years.

This didn't happen quickly.

The current peace.

The longest one I've run is probably runs for 48 hours, 50 hours.

But there's a cost to these long run times.

What gets you?

The really long run times is really slow motion, which you know, it can be nice, but it just isn't as entertaining.

In fact, that's another challenge Roy has set for himself over the years to get his sculptures to produce all kinds of different motion.

The initial ones were simple motion.

Just creating the motion as I gained control.

I developed ones that create patterns and optical patterns and there's basically two circular wheels going in opposite directions or the same direction, depending on the pattern.

The next category that came were more the floating motion.

I call that the bird motion.

And that's where um you'll get a motion up and down, back and forth.

But straight line motion or spiral motion mixed amongst those.

I've tried to do other ones that create randomness so that your optical pattern doesn't stay the same.

It changes these days.

Roy is focused on creating chaotic motion in his pieces, chaotic motion is motion that changes at unpredictable intervals so it can go fast.

It can go slow, but you can't tell when that's gonna happen.

And so chaotic motion.

That's a term, it's well defined.

It's used in physics.

It's used in engineering.

But to try to use it in art and to create a chaotic motion is extremely challenging.

Roy was able to deliberately create chaotic motion for the first time a few years ago in a piece aptly named chaos.

And I'm working in other ones now, trying to to use what I learned from that and to push the envelope.

Well, what can I do next?

Building one of these sculptures can be a slow and complicated process.

The initial designs float around in my head.

So there's a lot of daydreaming a lot of thinking.

Next Roy sketches out his designs on the computer.

I draw an illustrator and I animate usually in adobe after effects, animating the piece before building.

It helps Roy understand what the sculptures patterns will look like.

There's also another program, it's called Working Model.

I use it to calculate the center of mass of complicated arrangements of parts.

That calculation is critical to getting the balance right so that the sculpture moves in the intended way.

The trouble with the program is it doesn't exist anymore, at least, it doesn't for Mac, there hasn't been a current version for years, but Roy has a workaround.

I buy really old Ibooks, which are the last computers that would run it.

So that is actually a key program, but it's what I live in fear that all my old computers are going to die one day and it won't work anymore and I'm probably retired at that point.

Roy tinker's in these computer programs until he's satisfied with the overall design.

Then he sends the file over to a local woodworker who cuts out some of the individual parts on a CNC machine.

The rest of it all has to be done by hand.

The basic tools are drill press Sanders and band saw and then there's a lot of kind of hand tools, hammers and hand drills and all of that.

Roy uses these tools to build small parts like police and lovers as well as to smooth out and finish off the larger machine cut pieces once all the pieces are finished and stained.

Roy then assembles and tests the sculptures.

All of the large wooden parts have to be balanced because wood is not uniform.

I have developed techniques that I use tiny little brass weights that are embedded in the back to get things to balance the assembly probably is where I spend most time.

And then also very important is testing.

So I have large walls, I put up the sculptures and I leave them running for days.

Um and I want to get all the bugs out before a customer gets it.

So testing is also a big part of the assembly and making process.

One of Roy's new sculptures is in this phase production.

He's been using tape and small breast weights to tinker with the balance.

Eventually I get an intuitive feel but the only way to get that is by spending hours adding weight then standing and staring at it.

My wife laughs.

I just stand around and stare at sculptures all day.

But that's how I learn and get a feel for what they need after a sculpture is assembled perfectly balanced and quality controlled.

There's still one final step.

So a big part of the design and the work Is naming and we have a list that we have kept of all different names that we thought of over the years must have two or 300 names.

Now we've used Two or 300 names already when a new son in law joined the family.

He was fresh to the game and he was good.

He got several right off the bat but its naming is difficult from designing to tinkering to naming the entire process can take a while.

I have had pieces that started and took over a year more some I put aside because they couldn't get what I liked and then went back to them after a while and then some, I have an idea and it comes out and it comes out right and those are kind of boring because they just worked and while it's frustrating when things don't work.

Roy recognizes that it's all part of the process.

The frustration, it's kind of nice to have because it makes the joy after better.

But one follows the other that I don't think I've ever done a piece.

So I haven't been disappointed in it initially and then had to work through that and try to figure it out.

And Roy's passion for finding creative solutions isn't slowing down anytime soon.

I had a brother in law who when we started this, he said, this is great, but you're gonna run out of ideas and then what are you gonna do?

And that was 40 years ago.

It has just been one thing after another.

I thought I would run out, but I'm, you know, pushing 70 years old and there's still lots of that I want to do.

So it's because of the problems I like to solve the problems.