News-Letter

Media Credit: Britni Crocker The Hopkins team surrounds their mobile creation, "Twitter Jay and the Recyclists" which will compete in the upcoming race.

On Saturday, the American Visionary Art Museum (AVAM) will host its annual East Coast Kinetic Sculpture Race Championship on the shore of Baltimore's Inner Harbor. This innovative race is adapted from the initiative of California artist Hobart Brown, who in 1969 transformed his son's tricycle into a five-wheeled pentacycle for a race down Main Street. Maryland's modern day equivalent of this vehicle is known as a "kinetic sculpture" and has evolved into an "amphibious, human-powered work of art custom-built for the race."

Sponsored by an Arts Innovation grant and the Program in Museums and Society, the Hopkins team was able to realize its goal of competing in the race with their sculpture, "Twitter Jay and the Recyclists."

Under the blue head of the sculpture, graduate student David Hung, engineering director of the project, and junior Josh Hewitt, technology director, our pilots, take their seats. In what may prove to be a rash decision, they have promised to pedal Hopkins' sculpture throughout the entire eight hour, 15-mile span of the race. The rest of the Hopkins team will mostly cheer on their fellow sculptors, while some will work as the official pit crew.

Nora Krinitsky, a student earning her minor in Museums and Society, first learned about the race through trips to the AVAM, during which she saw some past sculptures. She subsequently contacted Joan Freedman, the director of the Digital Media Center (DMC), who frequently supports student projects. Through Freedman, Krinitsky met others who were interested in the race, and her team slowly formed.

On the actual day of the race, graduate student Rebecca Shapiro and DMC staff member Yana Sakellion will watch from the sidelines, while all other team members ­­­- senior Krinitsky, project manager and head of logistics, Joan Freedman, DMC director and advisor, sophomore Tabor Barranti, artistic director, junior Aasiyeh Zarafshar, sophomore Ian Lee, and freshman Stephanie Smith - will serve in the pit crew. As previously mentioned, Hung and Hewitt will be piloting the mobile sculpture.

Although the Hopkins team built their kinetic sculpture collaboratively, the leadership roles that both Hung and Barranti assumed in the engineering and artistic aspects of the sculpture became crucial to the vehicle's successful completion.

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