Joseph Herscher builds Rube Goldberg machines for fun (though not for a living). The New York Times profiles the artist, who explains that his goal is to try “to make it as absurd and useless as possible” to do very simple tasks via his amazing contraptions.

The project is also an attempt to inject larger meaning into a form he already loves. Four years ago, with no particular training in sculpture or mechanical engineering, Mr. Herscher built his first Rube Goldberg machine in the living room of the large house in Auckland, New Zealand, where he lived. Like his current projects, it was constructed mainly out of recycled materials and dollar-store finds, like Solo cups and paper-towel tubes. The result was a massively complex installation with an elementary school mad-genius aesthetic: balls rolled through tubes, bounced and dropped from one platform to another. A teakettle filled a plastic cup with water until it tripped a lever. Whirling sledgehammers slapped the balls forward until a final hammer swung down and smashed a Cadbury Creme Egg into a satisfying splat of chocolate ooze.

This is the Creme Egg in action (Joseph spent seven months on this project!):

Click over to the NYT article to see a video of his new contraption, the “Page Turner” in action. Pretty cool stuff. I wonder how many broken vases he went through before he got it right.