>>STEPHEN NORRINGTON: Seeing this mechanism
in action for the first time in 28 years,
I'm struck by how
organic and natural its motion is.
The way that I approached it was
looking at other kinds of tail mechanisms
I had seen and
pivoted mechanisms that were supposed to look
 kind of organic
seemed like an approach that was more like
a real spine or more like a real
tongue or something like that was probably
a bit more fruitful.
It also seemed like it was probably a lot
simpler to make.
The way that I did this was I just poured
a bunch of dental acrylic into the core mold
of the chestburster,
pulled the solid lump out, cut it up on a
band-saw. 
Using a Dremel I made four little grooves
at each
point of the compass at each of the little
sections that I made from the core.
So I had a bunch of disks
like a spine and each one had a little groove
at each point of the compass.
And I set into that Teflon tubing
and then down the center as a sort a spinal
column I used
just a piece of cable housing
and I found that it moved very, very fluidly,
but that wasn't enough.
You needed to then mount on top of the fluid
tongue-like
mechanism, you needed to
mount the head pivoting more traditionally
on a
universal joint with the four cables.
And the combination of the tongue-like motion
of the spine
plus the head moving
opposite to that often gives you that serpentine
motion that looks so
naturalistic.
And the whole thing is very simple, operated
by eight cables
from a couple of joysticks.
Easily mass-producible. 
And then the arms,
you know,
I've got to say I'm
kind of amazed at how much emotion comes out
of those little arms.
They were so small on the sculpture there
was no real chance of making a
tiny little mechanism.
You'd have to
get into watch-making to be that size.
So I just thought you know what I'll just
pull them with one tiny little cable
just to give them some motion.
But looking at it now,
it doesn't just move
it has a real character
and a real emotional component.
The whole thing ended up being kind of notable
because it's so simple,
it comes from the artist's point of view first
rather than a mechanical point of view.
And the result is greater than the sum of
its parts, which is always a good thing.
For something this big
or a tongue
or an alien antenna--
these interesting cable operated spine mechanisms,
y'know, are always very rewarding.
