page_title: George Rhoads
section_title: Audiokinetic Ball Machine Sculptures
hierarchical_section_title: George Rhoads / Audiokinetic Ball Machine Sculptures
caption_attribution_description: English: Located in the heart of Pennsylvania's capital city, the sculpture at Strawberry Square shopping district features a clock partially powered by the movement of rolling balls. Balls climb 46 feet to the second level of this large space so that visitors can see the complex movements up close on both stories. Colored wheels spin, pleasant chimes ring, and moving balls mesmerize.
context_page_description: George Rhoads is a contemporary American painter, sculptor, and origami master. He is best known for his whimsical audiokinetic sculptures in airports, science museums, shopping malls, children’s hospitals, and other public places throughout the world.
context_section_description: In the 1960s, Rhoads began experimenting with kinetic sound-producing metal sculptures. As he described these early machines: “You have a whole range of things happening in succession. Little balls rolling down a track are the motive power that hits a hammer that hits a xylophone bar or blows a whistle.” After seeing an exhibit of Rhoads' ball machines in Greenwich Village, sculptor Hans Van de Bovenkamp hired him to invent devices to use in his metal fountains. Eventually, Rhoads began creating fountains of his own.
  Rhoads continued to develop his audio-kinetic sculptures and his work gained national prominence after being featured on The David Frost Show and the Today show. In the early 1970s, shopping mall magnate David Bermant commissioned Rhoads to build audiokinetic sculptures for his shopping centers in Rochester, New York, and Hamden, Connecticut, and for years afterward continued to promote and sell Rhoads’ work.  
  Rhoads’ sculptures became known for its precise clockwork-like mechanisms governed by weight and timing while still maintaining the appearance of spontaneity and randomness. He promoted the concept that the machine itself was a work of art, and his pieces were designed to demystify machinery and stimulate viewer reaction. Modernist sculptor and Professor Emeritus at Princeton University, James Seawright, said of Rhoads' sculptures: "they embody almost every basic element of machinery, combined in a bewildering variety of ways. There's a level of mechanical genius behind inventing complex mechanisms." 
  
  In response to the growing number of commissions, Rhoads partnered with Robert McGuire to create his sculptures at RockStream Studios in Ithaca, NY. The studio and Rhoads’ whimsical sculptures were later featured in an episode of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. 
  In 1981, Rhoads was commissioned to build a sculpture entitled 42nd Street Ballroom for the  New York/New Jersey Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City, which ushered in a period of production for larger, monumental ball machine sculptures. In these large machines, chain-driven lifters carry balls to the top of the sculpture. Then, using only gravity, the balls travel down several different tracks that loop, twist, and spiral. The balls trigger motion, hit objects, strike bells, gongs, chimes, drums and even xylophone bars, allowing each machine to create its own music. Once the ball reaches the bottom of the sculpture, it is lifted to the top and the process continues.
  Over the last fifty years, Rhoads’ sculptures have been installed in public spaces and private collections around the world. The pieces range in size from small wall-mounted sculptures to machines that fill entire rooms and span multiple stories. Some of his work belongs to permanent museum collections at institutions like the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Art Institute of Chicago. Nearly all of his sculptures are still in operation today, and have been noted for their popularity with the public.
  In 2007, Creative Machines (located in Tucson, Arizona) took over the creation of Rhoads’ sculptures, and continues the tradition of Rhoads’ artwork today. Creative Machines continues to use the techniques developed by George Rhoads in their ball machine sculptures by incorporating similar fabrication methods, design elements, and strategies for making reliable, long lasting sculptures.
caption: Chockablock Clock Ball Machine, located in Strawberry Square, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
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