Mechanical Art Devices exhibition

Maxwell Hazan: exhibitor

He's 33-years old, hails from Brooklyn USA, has built four bikes as a professional custom motorcycle engineer and likes to photograph his creations beside rusty railroads. But who the hell doesn't like doing that?

So meet Max Hazan whose business is called (not very creatively) Hazan Motorworks. But when you're crafting machines like this all day and all night, there might not be much time left to remanufacture the business name.

He set up shop in Brooklyn in 2012, but soon he went West to Los Angeles. He takes months to build his bikes, we're advised. Which is hardly surprising. Love 'em or hate 'em, a lot of hours go into any custom project, and Max is very specific and finicky about what he wants. He's looking to build "exquisite motorcycles", and his motto is: Ever forward in creation.

 “My heart wasn’t in my day job,” he says. “So I took a pay cut to do something I actually like.”  We've heard that one before, but it's a shame you always seem to have to lose money to really enjoy yourself in this world, huh?

Chicara Nagata: exhibitor

Is there nothing the Japanese don't do well? So okay, they mucked up their part in the Second World War, but pretty much all the rest is good to excellent. Take this guy, for instance. He's Chicara Nagata which is one of those names you want to say half a dozen times to see how it rolls off the tongue.

He can do things with steel that put the rest of us back in the iron age, and he's been doing it for around 20 years. Or more. He nearly died when he was a kid (didn't everyone?), and he's got deep views and questions about the meaning of life and why are we here (we know the feeling).

Maybe that's what drives him to put thousands of hours of the life the doctors gave back to him into building motorcycles that no one is likely to ride. Not in anger, anyway. But you mustn't confuse art with motion, or aesthetics with action.

We've been wearing our art critic hats and studying his work and we like it. It's so ... well, Japanese. But unlike sushi and hara-kiri, it's much more appealing. Apparently, he lives a very peaceful life about 18 hours away from Tokyo, which could theoretical put him somewhere in West London or anywhere else on the planet. But when we double checked, he's got a place on Kyushu Island (which is nowhere near Hounslow).

Ulrich Teuffel: exhibitor

Ulrich Teuffel is a German. He was born in Kitzingen in 1965 and designed his first guitar at age 14 having been heavily influenced by radical luthier Steve Klein. Not that you'd know by looking at this instrument. Klein specialises in acoustic guitars and is both an innovator and revolutionary. Teuffel appears to have a very different vision and has focussed on "conceptual design".

It's certainly no Fender Stratocaster, Telecaster or Gibson Les Paul. But why "Birdfish"? Well it seems that it's got something to do with two of the key components being carved from blocks of "acoustically-optimal" aluminium.

Meanwhile "The tone bars, pickups and neck are all attached to the ‘bird’ and the ‘fish’ while the control unit – with a five-way switch like that of a classic 1950s guitar – forms the head of the ‘bird’."

Ain't ya glad you asked? Either way, we sorta like it in a deranged, offset, gassed-in-the-war kind of way. If nothing else, it's different. And these days that's pretty much what we're addicted to here at Sump.

Böhm Stirling: exhibitor

Irritatingly, there's almost no information on these amazing little Stirling engines. There's nothing to say who makes them, or who designed them, or how they came to be.

But you can buy them. That much we know. The prices range from CHF 220 to CHF 480. And in case you don't know, "CHF" is the shorthand for the Swiss franc.

But what is a Stirling engine? Well, it was invented by Scots clergyman Robert Stirling, in 1814, and essentially it's a heat engine that uses the expansion and contraction of air to power one or more pistons which in turn drives a crank and/or a flywheel, etc. The engine needs a heat source of some kind, but there's no cylinder detonation as with a conventional four-stroke or two stroke engine.

The Stirling engine operates more like a pump, expanding and contracting through the pressure (and release of pressure) from heated/cooled air.

We could enjoy playing with one or more of these toys, but would we get any work done in between? Well maybe. But they're interesting all the same. Check 'em out through the link below, which will also show you some of the other amazing stuff at this exhibition.

www.mbandf.com/mad-gallery

— The Third Man