(upbeat music)
- When people ask me what I do, I kind of sigh
'cause it's like, oh god, how do I explain this?
I found the easiest method is to say, I make these machines.
You know, like a ball rolls, and it hit some dominoes,
and that pulls a string,
and might turn the page of a newspaper
via a long chain reaction, using everyday objects.
And then they're just immediately like,
oh yeah, I got it, I got it.
I'm Joseph Herscher, and I make Rube Goldberg machines.
A Rube Goldberg machine, it's a machine that does
a simple task in an overly complicated way.
Rube Goldberg was actually a cartoonist.
And he used to draw these elaborate machines.
He was very popular in his time.
And the term Rube Goldberg has come to be used to describe
any kind of overly complicated mechanism.
We all kinda recognize these machines
'cause we've seen them throughout cinema and television.
Like "Pee-wee's Big Adventure", they have one at the start.
"Wallace and Gromit" is one of my favorites.
There's one in "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang."
Or the game Mousetrap, everybody loves that game.
The funnest part is just doing the machine,
no one actually cares about the board game itself.
I made my first machine when I was five years old.
It was a machine for storing my candy,
obviously very useful for a five year old.
But I also noticed it made my parents smile,
and that's kinda what spurred me on
to keep making elaborate devices.
I lost interest for a good few years while I was a teenager.
But when I was 22, I discovered these really great
Japanese machines from a kid's TV show.
My roommates and I got really inspired
and we started building this contraption.
For me, it reawoke my childhood passion
and I kept building, and building, and building.
And that was the beginning of my new career
as a professional useless machine builder.
- From "Joseph's Machines" on YouTube,
please welcome Joseph Herscher.
Joseph.
(audience cheering)
- Since that first homemade machine
slowly my machines have gotten more and more elaborate.
One of the hardest things I've ever done
was a live demonstration on Jimmy Kimmel.
That was so nerve-wracking because these machines,
they don't work every time,
but they have to when you're on live television,
I made a machine at the Venice Biennale
that pours water into a plant.
I had an appearance on Sesame Street.
I've made many feeding machines.
I've made a machine to stuff a turkey.
A sunscreen dispenser.
A way to lick stamps without having to actually taste them.
The biggest machine I've created
was in a huge postal factory
that used 30 slides that were five stories high.
And it was a machine that slid me into bed.
Usually takes one to three months to build a machine.
It's a lot of trial and error,
and it's learning through observation.
So I'm watching and seeing how things fail.
And seeing how they fail is really important
'cause that teaches me how to tweak it.
I want a certain amount of risk built in.
If I play it too safe, and they work every time,
then it's gonna be a boring machine.
But if you've got like asparagus flying through the air,
that's been caught in my mouth,
then that's miraculous when it works!
People often ask, do you calculate the physics behind them
and work out how things are gonna go?
No way, that's so hard!
Can you imagine calculating everything
based on the exact angle and airflow?
It would be impossible.
There's too much chaos at the small scale.
It's much faster to just grab a ball,
and roll it, and see where it heads.
There is a myriad of ways that I go about creating things.
Let's say I'm trying to connect A to B
and I have no idea how to connect it.
While I'll think, what's the theme here?
Let's say it's a dinner machine.
So what's some fun dinner objects
that I feel like working with?
Butter sounds fun, and maybe candles
'cause they can melt the butter.
And I allow myself this time to just play.
And then just see what I discover,
and what makes me laugh, what interests me.
So I discovered this amazing thing
where if you put butter on a strip of metal
with a candle under it, it'll slide down really slowly,
in this kinda crazy way.
That ended up being people's favorite part of that machine,
even though it was never part of the plan.
And I was just trying to get from A to B, ultimately.
I pour so much love into everything that I build,
that I really care about it working.
And so I'm just like on the edge of my seat,
willing it to work.
And on the 85th take, you suddenly get it.
And there's this magical moment.
(audience clapping and cheering)
I think ultimately I love the fact that
there's the potential for magic, and delight,
and play in the everyday world around us.
And I think that's what people enjoy
watching these machines, as well.
It's this kinda nice moment where everything
kinda just fits and connects.
And the universe feels less arbitrary, maybe?
And making those connections gives me
a wonderful sense of like peace.
(chimes sounding)