In 2010, the Dutch design studio HEYHEYHEY embarked on a mission to create the biggest Rube Goldberg in current history which they named Melvin the Magical Mixed Media Machine and launched during Dutch Design Week.
However Melvin the Machine was too big, too expensive and too static to travel.
So HEYHEYHEY specifically created “Melvin the Mini Machine” to be able travel the world – and it duly arrived in Ventura Lambrate, Milan for its launch at the Salone 2012
If the machine was going to travel, it needed to tell a story and interact with the place it showcases in and the people who view it. To create this story, HEYHEYHEY collaborated with PostPanic assigning visual language, texture and history to the new Melvin the Mini Machine
A walk to the park, two old briefcases and elements from past decades all go towards creating the interactions between the chain reaction system where a quiet and yet excited man for example, with a bow tie and a pipe impatiently awaits setting up the machine to begin its journey. At the end, Melvin the mini Machine signs its own postcard and stamps it to be sent by mail.
To see the original Big Melvin the Machine please continue here
For the 2010 Dutch Design Week, Melvin was featured for 10 days at the MU artspace where 14,000 people came to see it perform.
Melvin the Machine can be described as a Rube Goldberg machine with a twist. Besides doing what Rube Goldberg’s do best – performing a simple task as inefficiently as possible, often in the form of a chain reaction – Melvin has an identity.
Actually, the only purpose of this machine is promoting its own identity.
It is highly engineered, highly interactive and social but the actual task of the machine might deceive its purpose and vision
The idea behind Melvin is to capture a moment and make the experience worth more than the process itself.
Melvin takes pictures and makes video’s of his audience which he instantly uploads to his website, Facebook and Twitter account.
With built in buttons and triggers connected to computers, Melvin is able to disguise the value of its task by mesmerizing the audience to follow the track of sequences but capturing the “moment” where they all share space and experience this piece of engineered art
Besides that he makes his own merchandise.
All of this within 4 minutes of craziness which you just have to witness yourself
“It’s not easy being green” one day park by HEYHEYHEY/ Eindhoven, 2010
“Bein’ Green” is a popular song written by Joe Raposo in 1970 for the first season of the children’s television program Sesame Street and it was performed by Kermit the Frog (voiced by Jim Henson).
“It’s not easy being green” is a phrase that appears in pop culture as an expression of melancholy. The song is associated with problems with identity, and failure of individuality, but also with themes like self-worth and celebration of diversity.
HEYHEYHEY is a design studio with a special interest in “whatever comes to our attention”
We are not limited by any visual style or medium.
We create exclusive communicative ideas for each specific client, project, medium and/or moment.
