Last chance to see two unusual exhibitions at the Kinetica Museum. Both end today.

A great man once said that chance favours the prepared mind. That’s precisely the attitude to adopt when ambling around London, something I like to do most weekends. The cheek-by-jowl confusion of buildings will yield many treasures if you keep your peepers open.

A couple of weeks back, serendipity led me to just such a place. I’ve wandered through the Spitalfields Market buildings many times before. Never had I stumbled upon the transparent cube of fun that is Kinetica, nesting within the market.

Digital Man by Jim Bond. Photo from estherase’s Flickr photostream.

The gallery showcases ‘kinetic, electronic and experimental art’. In other words, weird stuff that moves. The ground floor is given over to the work of Jim Bond. He specialises in thought-provoking wireframes of the human form, and bizarre machines that carry out futile tasks. The website gives some examples:

“From a radio designed to endlessly roam through available channels to a disjointed figure briefly assembled in space, Jim Bond’s resonating and vibrating structures discard the utilitarian qualities that are typically associated with machines.”

These are the things androids dream of when they’re tired of electric sheep

Move upstairs and things get creepy. Ray Lee has assembled a menagerie of robots under mood lighting. Whimsically whirling and honking, the electronic beasties gave me the heebie-jeebies. Kinetica describe the experience in a suitable blur of adjectives:

“An elaborate system of electro-mechanical sound generators, spinning oscillators, and noise machines creates a complex, multi-layered sound composition and a compelling visual spectacle.”

That spectacle ends today, with the gallery closing at 6pm (according to the web site). If that’s too short a notice, I refer you back to the opening maxim about chance and the prepared mind.