Jay Walking

Well, make that pushing— the result of an early disaster for the handful of students who created the first-ever Johns Hopkins entry in the American Visionary Art Museum's Kinetic Sculpture Race. The annual event requires teams to build a human-powered work of art that can manage a 15-mile trek over land and sea. Twitter Jay and the Recyclists featured two bicycles (for power), recycled materials, and an LED screen for displaying "tweets"— or text messages— from spectators. The bikes' back wheels bent early, but the determined teammates literally pushed on and finished the race. They even won the "Golden Dinosaur," awarded to the most spectacular failure. "Needless to say, we had a great time, all things considered," says Nora Krinitsky, the history and museum studies major who kicked off the project a year earlier. Here, undergraduates Stephanie Smith and Tabor Barranti navigate the water course through Baltimore's Inner Harbor.
— Catherine Pierre

Return to June 2009 Table of Contents