Full video

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when people ask me what i do i kind of

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sigh because it's like oh god how do i

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explain this

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i found the easiest myth is to say i

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make these machines you know like a ball

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rolls and hits some dominoes and it

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pulls a string and it might turn the

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page of a newspaper via a long chain

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reaction using everyday objects and then

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they're just immediately like oh yeah i

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got it i got it

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i'm joseph herscher and i make rube

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goldberg machines

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[Music]

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a rube goldberg machine it's a machine

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that does a simple task in an overly

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complicated way rube goldberg was

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actually a cartoonist and he used to

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draw these elaborate machines he was

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very popular in his time and the term

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rube goldberg has come to be used to

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describe any kind of overly complicated

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mechanism

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we all kind of recognize these machines

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because we've seen them throughout

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cinema and television like pee-wee's big

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adventure they have one at the start

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wallace and gromit is one of my

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favorites there's one in chitty chitty

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bang bang

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all the game mouse traps everybody loves

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that game the funnest part is just doing

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the machine no one actually cares about

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the board game itself

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i made my first machine when i was five

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years old i was a machine for storing my

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candy obviously very useful for a

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five-year-old but i also noticed it made

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my parents smile and that's kind of what

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spurred me on to keep making elaborate

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devices

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i lost interest for a good few years

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while i was a teenager but when i was 22

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i discovered these really great japanese

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machines from a kids tv show

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my roommates and i got really inspired

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and we started building this contraption

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for me it reworked my childhood passion

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and i kept building and building and

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building and that was the beginning of

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my new career as a professional useless

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machine builder from joseph's machines

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on youtube please welcome joseph

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hirscher joseph

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since that first homemade machine slowly

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my machines have got more and more

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elaborate one of the hardest things i've

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ever done was a live demonstration on

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jimmy kimmel

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that was so nerve-wracking because these

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machines they don't work every time but

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they have to when you're on live

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television

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i made a machine at the venice biennale

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that pours water into a plant i had an

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appearance on sesame street hello

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i've made many feeding machines i've

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made a machine to

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stuff a turkey

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a sunscreen dispenser

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a way to lick stamps without having to

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actually taste them

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the biggest machine i've created

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was in a huge postal factory it used 30

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slides that were five stories high

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and it was a machine that slid me into

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bed

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it usually takes one to three months to

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build a machine it's a lot of trial and

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error and it's learning through

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observation so i'm watching and seeing

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how things fail and seeing how they fail

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is really important because that teaches

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me

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how to tweak it

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i want a certain amount of risk built in

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if i play it too safe and they work

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every time then it's going to be a

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boring machine but if you've got like

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asparagus flying through the air that's

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being caught in my mouth then that's

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miraculous when it works

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people often ask do you calculate like

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the physics behind them and work out how

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things are going to go no way that's so

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hard can you imagine calculating

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everything based on the exact angle and

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air flow like it would be impossible

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there's too much chaos at this small

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scale it's much faster to just grab a

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ball and roll it and see where it hits

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there is a myriad of ways that i go

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about creating things let's say i'm i'm

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trying to connect a to b and i have no

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idea how to connect it well i'll think

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what's the theme here let's say it's a

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dinner machine so what's some fun dinner

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objects that i feel like working with

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butter sounds fun and maybe candles

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because they can like melt the butter

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and i allow myself this time to just

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play

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and then just see what i discover and

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what makes me laugh what interests me

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they discovered this amazing thing where

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if you put butter on a strip of metal

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with a candle under it it'll slide down

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really slowly in this kind of crazy way

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that ended up being people's favorite

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part of that machine even though it was

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never part of the plan i was just trying

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to get from a to b ultimately

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i pour so much love into everything that

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i build

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that i really care about it working and

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so i'm just like on the edge of my seat

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willing it to work and on the 85th take

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you suddenly get it and it's this

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magical moment

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[Music]

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[Applause]

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i think ultimately i love the fact that

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there's this potential for magic and

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delight and play in the everyday world

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around us and i think that's what people

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enjoy watching these machines as well

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it's this kind of nice

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moment where everything kind of just

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fits and connects

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and the universe feels less

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arbitrary maybe and making these

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connections gives me a wonderful sense

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of like peace

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you