Welcome to the realm of the amazing...

Kinetic King

I, Lunatim Rex, invite you to partake of the fascinating videos and pictures contained herein!

Ж Whoo, hoo! Ж

In February of 2013, I worked on a music video for the production company Pomp & Clout. The video, Tuna Melt, looks awesome and will hopefully go viral. You might also be interested in the behind-the-scenes video here, or some pictures taken during production. From March 20th to March 23rd, I returned to the Family Museum in Bettendorf, Iowa for my second year and created three big gadgets. The local TV station KWQC Channel 6 did an interview with me, and local newspaper Quad City Times also wrote an article about my appearance. And here's a YouTube video made by Bryan Witt of Channel 6. Whoo, hoo!

In November, I signed on with Goliath Games as a consultant on their new stick-bomb kits, Stick Storm. If you like weird old music, you should also check out the Lost Discs Radio Show and be sure to listen to the 11th Anniversary Special where Yours Truly is mentioned--and check out the neato animated GIF I did for them. It's more fun than you can shake a stick at!

On October 5, 2012, I detonated two clever-lever gadgets for Ivy Tech in Fort Wayne, Indiana, as part of their Inspire Academy program to encourage science education among kids. Here's a press release that you might also enjoy. I created a small stick bomb for the Minnesota Children's Museum on October 18, 2012. Two days later, I created a large clever-lever gadget for the Healthy Life/Home Improvement Expo at the Minneapolis Convention Center. You can see the gadgets on my Videos page. Whoo, hoo, Hoosiers!

On August 27, I made an appearance on ABC's new daytime show, Good Afternoon America, setting off a clever-lever gadget at their Times Square Studio in Manhattan. You can see the video here!

On April 27, 2012, I detonated a world-record stick bomb with 7,255 sticks as part of the Saint Paul Art Crawl. From May 19th to May 21st, I took part in the American Society for Quality World Conference in Anaheim, California. From June 1st to June 3rd, I participated in an exhibit opening at the National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York. You can see these videos on my Videos page.

On March 11-12th, 2012, I participated in the Tucson Festival of Books, creating two gadgets in the Bear Down Gym at the University of Arizona. On March 20-24th, I created five gadgets in five days at the Family Museum in Bettendorf, Iowa. On the fifth day, I detonated a clever-lever gadget with 728 elements on it for the unofficial world record. You can see videos of these gadgets on my Videos page. Whoo, hoo!

On December 8, 2011, I finished writing my history of stick bombs. It's the only real source of information on the development of stick bombs on the entire Internet.

On November 18th, 2011, I successfully detonated a world-record herringbone chain with 3,100 sticks! The event was featured on the evening news at KARE-11. You can watch this attempt, or learn the secrets of making herringbone chains on my Videos page. On November 26th and 27th, I created two gadgets for the Red Chapel in Rancho Cucamonga, California.

On October 7th, 2011, I attempted a world-record stick bomb with 6,767 sticks as part of the Saint Paul Art Crawl. That attempt failed as the cobra weave locked up several times. On October 18th, I made another attempt which was successful, detonating a colossal stick-bomb field with 6,818 sticks in it. You can view both attempts, or my latest stick-bomb tutorial, on my Videos page. It's a real blast!

During the Spring and Summer of 2011, I was a contestant on America's Got Talent on NBC. I made it all the way to 13th place, out of 25,000 auditions, and barely missed out on making the Top Ten. Here's a link to one of my Facebook fan pages. I made five appearances on the show. My first appearance at the Minneapolis audition featured a stick bomb and my second appearance in Las Vegas featured a clever-lever gadget. My Quarter-Final attempt at a world-record stick bomb was a disaster. I did make a successful comeback during the Wild Card round with this herringbone chain which got thunderous applause from the audience and Piers Morgan even genuflected before me and proclaimed that I was truly the King. For my Semi-Final gadget, I went with a world-record clever-lever gadget that shot ping-pong balls and candy over much of the audience, even hitting Howie Mandel in the face with a ping-pong ball. (Yes, he was practicing 'safe sticks' by wearing safety goggles.) You can also check out the official Kinetic King page on NBC's website here, or an article in the Daily Mail. Whoo, hoo!

The Fun Stuff

Click on the icon below to go to my extensive collection of kinetic gadget videos.

VIDEOS

If you're not able to view the videos and want to see pictures of my kinetic gadgets, click on the link below.

PICTURES

Public Exhibitions

I've made so many public appearances with my kinetic art lately, that I've created a subpage devoted exclusively to public exhibitions of my kinetic art! Click on the icon below to check it out.

The History of Stick Bombs

There's an almost complete lack of information anywhere on the development of stick bombs, so I decided to use my expertise on the subject to write up a history.

What is Kinetic Art?

To the uninitiated, my kinetic gadgets are gnarly chain-reaction devices that collapse and explode in, like, really cool ways; to the discerning aesthete, they're mechanically-iterative, entropy-generating entities designed to confront the observer's pre-conceived notions about Newtonian physics and challenge their paradigms for processing reductivistic-mechanistic Weltanschauungen from a post-modernistic perspective. (Well, not really...)

Much more than mere domino tumbling, my kinetic gadgets use a wide variety of chain-reaction techniques of my own invention and they have Dalíesque names like Experimental Polymodal Slack-Generating Apparatus #9 and Test Detonation of 0.2 Kilostick Boosted-Yield Xyloexplosive Device #1. Not only can my gadgets collapse and explode in many ways, but they can play music tunes and have animation in them.

Kinetic art is a new, open-ended art medium whose potential has barely been tapped. The number of chain-reaction techniques is virtually limitless. You might find these articles on mechanical explosives and kinetic computing to be interesting. Enjoy!

Links to other kinetic art pages.

Professional Information

My kinetic gadgets are truly one-of-a-kind as many of the techniques used are of my own invention and seen nowhere else. Their strong visual impact and their ability to incorporate logos or jingles into the design make my gadgets ideal for commercials. They've been in museum exhibitions where they always draw a crowd and have appeared on television several times. If you're a video production house looking for a unique idea for a short art film, I have a scenario available upon request. If you're a representative of a toy company looking for new product ideas (like the perfect domino, which nobody seems to get right), send me an e-mail. If you're a new band trying to get a killer music video on a reasonable budget, please shoot me an inquiry. If you have any other business inquiry regarding my kinetic art, please feel free to contact me at lunatim@infionline.net .

The Kinetic King webpage was last updated on 4/18/2013. All content, except where noted, was created by and is © Timothy Fort. Creator makes no guarantees as to proper performance and compatibility of video files. The use of safety goggles is strongly recommended for anybody creating or detonating stick bombs.

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