Tom Shannon (artist)
Encyclopedia
Tom Shannon is an American artist
and inventor.
He lives and works in Manhattan. He has three sons.
Squat, one of his early works, made at 19 years old, was included in the landmark exhibition The Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1969. His sculptures have since been included in international exhibitions such as the Centre Pompidou
, the Stedelijk Museum
, Moderna Museet
, the Venice Biennale
, the Sao Paulo Biennial, the Biennale de Lyon, the Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Art Tower Mito and the Whitney Museum. He was a featured artist at the 2003 TED Conference where he presented Air Gene, a spherical helium airship whose entire surface is a LED video screen . He also presented a series of paintings made by a remote-controlled pendulum in another TED talk in 2009 .
Shannon is perhaps best known for magnetically levitated sculpture. Using permanent magnets the sculptures hover silently in the air and never lose altitude. His series of suspended arrays includes room-filling three-dimensional crystalline arrangements of magnetic spheres each of which orient to Earth's terrestrial field in the manner of a compass.
His recent work includes large outdoor sculptures which behave as weightless objects. The sculpture's internal mechanisms consisted of axles, ball-bearings, universal joints, ball & sockets, fulcrums and massive counterweights, give them the ability to spin, tilt, rise/fall and glide horizontally and eventually return to equilibrium.
Shannon designed the TED Prize, the Buckminster Fuller prize and the Trophee Jules Verne
installed at the Musee de la Marine in Paris.
Aerovironment, Inc., the engineering firm founded by aeronautics legend Paul MacCready
, found the design feasible; it can be aerodynamically controlled and can present clear computer video in daylight.
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
and inventor.
Personal life
His parents are John Kingsley Shannon (1921–2010), a marine pilot and inventor, and Audrey Elizabeth (1925- ). He has two brothers, John (1945- ) and James (1954–2001). Shannon attended the University of Wisconsin. He received his MFA in 1971 from the Art Institute of Chicago.He lives and works in Manhattan. He has three sons.
Career
Tom Shannon's work has been known to incorporate scientific themes.Squat, one of his early works, made at 19 years old, was included in the landmark exhibition The Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1969. His sculptures have since been included in international exhibitions such as the Centre Pompidou
Centre Georges Pompidou
Centre Georges Pompidou is a complex in the Beaubourg area of the 4th arrondissement of Paris, near Les Halles, rue Montorgueil and the Marais...
, the Stedelijk Museum
Stedelijk Museum
Founded in 1874, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam is a museum for classic modern and contemporary art in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. It has been housed on the Paulus Potterstraat, next to Museum Square Museumplein and to the Rijksmuseum, Van Gogh Museum and the Concertgebouw, in Amsterdam Zuid...
, Moderna Museet
Moderna Museet
Moderna museet, the Museum of Modern Art, Stockholm, Sweden, is a state museum located on the island of Skeppsholmen in central Stockholm, that was first opened in 1958. Its first manager was Pontus Hultén...
, the Venice Biennale
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...
, the Sao Paulo Biennial, the Biennale de Lyon, the Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Art Tower Mito and the Whitney Museum. He was a featured artist at the 2003 TED Conference where he presented Air Gene, a spherical helium airship whose entire surface is a LED video screen . He also presented a series of paintings made by a remote-controlled pendulum in another TED talk in 2009 .
Sculpture
Shannon's sculptures are strongly idea driven. Their subject matter is generally concerned with existential conditions, i.e., the forces, properties, characteristics, proportions, the web of sensations and knowledge of which we are a part. A good example is the Ray, 1976, a sculpture of the spheres of the Sun and Earth and the cone of energy, gravity, electromagnetic, luminous, that connects the two, in proportion.Shannon is perhaps best known for magnetically levitated sculpture. Using permanent magnets the sculptures hover silently in the air and never lose altitude. His series of suspended arrays includes room-filling three-dimensional crystalline arrangements of magnetic spheres each of which orient to Earth's terrestrial field in the manner of a compass.
His recent work includes large outdoor sculptures which behave as weightless objects. The sculpture's internal mechanisms consisted of axles, ball-bearings, universal joints, ball & sockets, fulcrums and massive counterweights, give them the ability to spin, tilt, rise/fall and glide horizontally and eventually return to equilibrium.
Shannon designed the TED Prize, the Buckminster Fuller prize and the Trophee Jules Verne
Jules Verne Trophy
The Jules Verne Trophy is a prize for the fastest circumnavigation of the world by any type of yacht with no restrictions on the size of the crew provided the vessel has registered with the organization and paid an entry fee. A vessel holding the Jules Verne trophy will not necessarily hold the...
installed at the Musee de la Marine in Paris.
Paintings
Over the years Shannon has devised several techniques for making paintings. Beside watercolor representations of planned work He has found ways to co-author with nature the paintings For example, in the Trajectory series he tossed rubber balls wet with paint on inclined canvases ,capturing the natural parabolic curve of the ball's path in gravity. In the Paint Loom series, long tubes with holes drilled like a bamboo flute, are used to create wave patterns. The Evaporation paintings grow for a month. The Paint Pendulum paintings are made using a radio-controlled six color pendulum of the artist's invention.Patents
Shannon holds patents for the following:- first tactile telephone - US Pat. 3780225 - Filed Jan 3, 1972
- a color television projector (w/ Walter De Maria, Maris Ambats) - US Pat. 3800085 - Filed Oct 20, 1972
- a synchronous world clockUS Pat. 4579460 - Filed May 17, 1984featuring a Fuller-Sadao map face, which is in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution
- a double-reversible garments (w/ Caty Shannon)
- a Video Airship (Air Genie)[03].US Pat. 7173649 - Filed May 29, 2002
- patents pending for Graphene Floating Spheres and Magnetic Linking System
Air Genie Video Airship
The Video Airship is an ongoing project which weaves together several themes in Tom Shannon's work. In the late 60's Shannon proposed spherical televisions linked to orbiting camera satellites. Buckminster Fuller had earlier proposed a 200-ft sphere covered with lights to display Earth to the United Nations. Shannon designed a LED-covered spherical blimp with cameras that could land at campuses to deliver education and at night host rave dances.Aerovironment, Inc., the engineering firm founded by aeronautics legend Paul MacCready
Paul MacCready
Paul B. MacCready, Jr. was an American aeronautical engineer. He was the founder of AeroVironment and the designer of the human-powered aircraft that won the Kremer prize...
, found the design feasible; it can be aerodynamically controlled and can present clear computer video in daylight.