Sisyphus in Hiding by Dave Johnson

Dave Johnson continues his series of automata featuring Sisyphus of Greek myth. The results are impressive as always!

From the video description:

Here's our old pal Sisyphus again, this time trying to avoid his responsibilities by hiding in a box.

My core inspirations were these:
1) Claude Shannon's Ultimate Machine
2) The availability of a nice old microscope box.
3) The astonishing human capacity for denial.

This machine is a sort of cousin to the "Most Useless Machine" or "Ultimate Machine", originally built by Claude Shannon. (See http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archive... for some history.) Many versions can now be found on the internet, almost all of which use electronics. I wanted to get a similar effect purely mechanically.

Your can see still photos of the Sisyphus in Hiding automaton in this flickr set.

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