Stamford Museum and Nature Center
Stamford, Connecticut

As part of an exhibit celebrating the work of Rube Goldberg, complicated machine inventor extraordinaire, we were commissioned to create our own complicated work of art. We chose to produce an interactive homage to things that really stink.

One starts the process by, naturally, pulling on a finger, which trips a wire that turns on a fan, which blows across an old pair of socks, the stench from which kills a canary, which falls … well, you get the idea. Along the way, the process incorporates other stinky things, such as Brut aftershave, the dreadful Ben Affleck/J. Lo vehicle Gigli, and a cork stuck in the rear end of a skunk. The whole thing ends with a piece of cheese being cut by a guillotine. Rube Goldberg (and Alexander Calder), eat your hearts out!