Kinetics. The record of an exhibition. Hayward Gallery 1970 - ACE024.2

Names of artists whose work is shown. Overhead shot of people outside the Hayward Gallery, forming a queue. Frontage. The queue. Machine – chiefly a wheel and hosepipes – sprinkling water on youngsters running around near it. Commentary says "Motion, speed, change, dynamics. Twentieth-century man prides himself on his mobility, on his command of the mechanics that almost infinitely extend his own animal powers of locomotion. He also knows that motion is everywhere…." A tall screw worked by a pedal, something resembling a glass-panelled radio-telescope, wind-powered devices – a pink and white windsock, metal rods. Multi-screen film of moving objects. Moving beads forming patterns; optical devices. Commentary says that the movement seen in film is convincing as the mind links separate shots and gives them meaning; says kinetic art is not much younger than film (kinema), talks of automata and the historic search for a perpetual motion device; electricity can "keep things moving in apparent perpetuity". Commentary gives descriptions of different kinds of kinetic art: that relying on electricity for movement, that moved by other forces, that giving the illusion of movement. Optical effects of moving shapes and colours. Kinetics rejects the idea of art as "other-worldly". Moving glass spheres reflecting what’s in the room. Visitors to the exhibition. Electrically-powered exhibits: Perspex and wire objects against a red background; wire frames with moving wire wheels. Reflections on aluminium foil. Metal balls. Plastic cylinders containing coloured plastic screws, moving steel tubes and other reflecting shapes. Light playing over reflecting wires, producing shadows against nails.