Tag: cartoons

Complexifying the Simple

~ millennialmatriarchs ~ Leave a comment

If there is a monument to human overthinking, it has to be the Rube Goldberg machine.

Named after the American cartoonist Rube Goldberg, these contraptions perform the simplest of tasks—turning on a light, pouring a glass of water, popping a balloon—in the most complicated way possible. A marble rolls down a ramp, tips a spoon, flicks a switch, releases a toy car, which hits a domino, which startles a rubber duck… and several improbable steps later, the job is done. Eventually.

At first glance, Rube Goldberg machines seem like elaborate jokes. In fact, they began as precisely that. In the early 20th century, Goldberg drew cartoons of absurdly complex inventions that parodied America’s growing obsession with technology and efficiency. His most famous series, “Inventions,” featured machines with labels like “Self-Operating Napkin” or “Simple Way to Take Your Own Picture.” The humour lay in contrast: why build a 20-step mechanical circus to do what your hand can accomplish in two seconds?

Yet over time, the joke evolved into a genre.

At their heart, these machines are celebrations of cause and effect.

Each step must trigger the next with precise timing. A falling object transfers energy. A lever multiplies force. A pulley redirects motion. Though they look chaotic, good Rube Goldberg machines are carefully engineered systems. Behind the apparent madness lies an understanding of physics—gravity, friction, momentum, torque.

That’s why they are so beloved in STEM education. Today, Rube Goldberg machines are built in classrooms, engineering labs, art studios, and living rooms. There are national competitions in the United States run by the Rube Goldberg Institute, where students design multi-step chain-reaction machines to complete assigned tasks. The goal is not efficiency but creativity, reliability, and storytelling through mechanics. Building one requires planning, testing, recalibrating, and accepting failure—lots of it. If step 17 misfires, the entire sequence collapses. Students learn quickly that systems thinking matters. Every action has consequences, and tiny misalignments compound.

(From V. Raghunathan’s series ‘How Administrations Work!’ featured in the Financial Express. A satire on administration, based on Goldberg machines).

And yet, beyond physics, Rube Goldberg machines are deeply artistic.

Watching one in motion feels like choreography. There is suspense as the marble pauses on a narrow ledge. There is surprise when a balloon bursts. There is delight when the final flag pops up to declare success.

Modern technology hides complexity behind smooth interfaces. Tap a screen and food appears. Click a button and money transfers. Rube Goldberg machines do the opposite—they expose process. They revel in visible mechanisms, in levers and ramps and strings that refuse to disappear into abstraction.

Perhaps that is why they continue to fascinate adults as much as children.

Unlike automated factories or digital code, these machines often fail in spectacular fashion. A domino tilts the wrong way. A ramp shifts. A candle burns too slowly. The collapse is not embarrassing—it is part of the show. Viewers laugh, builders reset, and the experiment continues.

In this way, Rube Goldberg machines mirror creative life itself. Progress rarely moves in straight lines. We improvise. We overcomplicate. We learn through misfires.

As a STEM tool perhaps most importantly, it fosters curiosity.

Why does the marble move faster on a steeper incline? What surface reduces friction? How much force is needed to tip the spoon? Questions arise naturally when objects misbehave. The machine becomes a laboratory disguised as a toy.

More than a century after Rube Goldberg first skewered modern gadgetry, his name has become synonymous not with satire but with ingenuity. What began as mockery of unnecessary complexity has turned into a celebration of imaginative problem-solving.

Today, there are national competitions in the United States run by the Rube Goldberg Institute, where teams design multi-step chain-reaction machines to complete assigned tasks. The goal is not efficiency but creativity, reliability, and storytelling through mechanics.

Beyond competitions, the aesthetic has spilled into popular culture and design.

In 2003, Honda released its now-iconic “Cog” commercial featuring parts of a Honda Accord arranged in a flawless chain reaction. Gears tipped into springs, springs released bearings, bearings rolled into levers—culminating in the car moving forward. No computer graphics. Just painstaking mechanical precision.

Similarly, the band OK Go transformed chain reactions into performance art in their video “This Too Shall Pass,” filling a warehouse with cascading objects, swinging pendulums, and erupting paint cannons. The machine became choreography. Cause and effect became spectacle.

Kinetic artist Joseph Herscher constructs domestic Rube Goldberg devices that wake him up, butter his toast, or serve tea through absurd sequences of ramps and levers.

And then there are works that stretch the idea into art philosophy. Dutch sculptor Theo Jansen builds wind-powered walking structures known as Strandbeest—intricate skeletal forms that move across beaches through elaborate mechanical linkages.

More than a century after Goldberg first thought these up, his name has become synonymous not just with unnecessary complexity, but with imaginative possibility. What began as satire is now a tribute—to curiosity, to process, and to the delicate chain reactions that connect one moment to the next.

–Meena


MOOMINS

~ millennialmatriarchs ~ 1 Comment

Way back in the ‘60s and ‘70s growing up in Delhi, the family newspaper was The Statesman. It was considered by Tamilian families to be the closest substitute for The Hindu, which in those days used to arrive in Delhi with a delay of a day or two.

So like all good Tamilian families outside Tamil Nadu, we too took The Statesman. And through this, got introduced to the Moomins, which was the only cartoon strip that the paper carried.

The central characters of the cartoons, which have just turned 80, are gentle-looking hippo-like creatures called the Moomins . They are white and roundish, with large snouts. The Moomin world and its characters are the creations of the Swedish-Finn illustrator and writer Tove Jansson, and the books and comic strips were originally published in Swedish in Finland.

The core family consists of the main protagonist, Moomintroll, a small and well-meaning Moomin who who is forever having adventures and often finds himself in trouble; his mother, the nurturing and loving Moominmamma; and his father, the restless Momminpappa. And besides, there are many of their friends.

The first book was written during World War II as a fairytale for Tove to comfort herself during dark times.  It is based on the situation and stories of  millions of displaced people seeking refuge. The Moomins live in a tall blue house – a joyful place where everyone is welcome, whoever they are. The motto is ‘The door is always open’. The blue-purple Moominhouse is thus a symbol of security, shelter and a sense of belonging. No wonder then that even today the Moomins represent hope for refugees, so much so that UK cities are using this as an the inspiration for a series of art installations in UK cities, in collaboration with Refugee Week. 

The Moomin stories are tales of adventure and overcoming adversities, always with a sense of inclusion and tolerance, and living together in cheer and happiness. Harmony with nature is a recurring underlying theme. The underlying message of all the Moomin stories is that it’s the simple things that are valuable in any situation, and that one’s attitude can often change a bad day into a good one.

Many in India may not be very familiar with these characters, but there are nine Moomin novels which were all successful. The cartoon strip was syndicated in 1954, to over 120 publications in 40 countries. This comic strip reached 20 million readers daily. There was a TV show too, which was originally broadcast in Poland and then sold to other countries including the UK, and aired on PBS in the US. There are even two Moomin theme parks, one in Finland and the other in Japan. Moomin stories have been adapted for the theatre, the cinema, and as an opera.

Here are some Moomin quotes, encapsulating good sense and postivity:

‘That’s most extraordinary, but I’m so used to your doing extraordinary things that nothing surprises me.’

‘Perhaps it will come – perhaps not. It’s all the same to a person who knows that everything is unnecessary.’

‘How nice to be on your own for a bit and do what you like.’

‘I like you, I don’t want to make you feel unhappy.’

‘The main thing in life is to know your own mind.’

In a conflicted world, Moomins may be the cartoon characters we need!

–Meena

Visual: From http://www.moomins.com

He Said It!

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My day started well. This morning my newspaper informed me that May 5 is being celebrated as World Cartoonists Day! That brought a smile to my face even before I turned to the daily cartoon strips in my newspapers…something I do before I read the headlines. Faced with the continuous ‘breaking news’ of a world gone mad and bad in every which way, the cartoons remind me that, depending on what lens you use to see the world, there can still be something to laugh about!

Quite by coincidence, I recently read the autobiography of R.K. Lakshman, India’s best known cartoonist, illustrator, and tongue-in-cheek commentator on life and times.  Lakshman was an essential part of my growing up and growing older, as it was for at least two generations of Indians. Lakshman’s You Said It! daily cartoon provided a glimpse into the world through the eyes of the silent spectator, the Common Man.

Reading his autobiography The Tunnel of Time provided a peep into  Lakshman—the man himself, as he rambled through memories of places, people and events with humour, wit and yes, some irreverence! Since the time he can remember he wanted to be an artist. “An artist is what I wanted to be…I decided that I would pass my examinations but I never attempted to get high marks….My parents and elders were a great help, for they never took it seriously when one of the sons got pitiably low marks or even failed!”

As the youngest of 6 sons (one of whom was the famous author R.K. Narayan) and 2 daughters Lakshman grew up in a big household; he was left to himself all day, happily spending his time playing or drawing. So much so, that his parents did not realise that it was time that he was sent to school until a visiting uncle noticed him at home when all other children of his age were at school. He was promptly taken to the nearby municipal school—kicking and crying! From where the young Lakshman promptly ran away, and resumed play, until some months later another visitor took him back to the school. And there he stayed; as he says, “I moved year after year, class after class,” all the time filling the margins of his notebooks with sketches and doodles. The same continued through college days until he graduated with a BA degree; and immediately moved to Madras to try and get a job in one of the newspapers while his elders “as usual generously cheered me on my way into the world.”

As we continue to travel through the tunnel of time with the budding and determined cartoonist we learn about attempts and adventures as he makes his way into the world as an aspiring cartoonist, until he eventually became a cartoonist for the Times of India, and there he remained for the next five decades!

For all of us who imagine that a cartoonist just has a Eureka moment and with a few swift strokes produces a cartoon, it was indeed revealing to learn what it really took to put the Common Man on the front page every morning without fail. “I would be at the drawing board in the office exactly at 8.30 in the morning, reading and concentrating on news items, political analyses, editorial commentaries, opinions, spending the time tormenting myself, waiting hopelessly for the muse of satire to oblige me with an idea for next day’s cartoon before the deadline. When the idea did at last dawn, the rest of the work was comparatively easy. It was like shooting a movie—choosing a suitable setting, selecting the characters, compressing the script into a brief caption. By then I would have put in six hours of continuous work. Mentally and physically exhausted I would go home. But the sense of fulfilment and creative satisfaction would be immense.”

R.K. Lakshman shares delightful anecdotes about his travels and his many interesting friends, his close encounters with the powers that be, and the highs and lows of chronicling the facts and foibles of every aspect of social and political life. The Tunnel of Time is a treat of a read.

–Mamata