A Few Loose Screws II

I was recently invited to a local exhibit where we had to come up with 2D and 3D/tactile artworks, and I took the opportunity to satisfy my steampunk fetish. Here are some pics.

I wanted to continue the idea for my illustration "A Few Loose Screws" (see below) and thought of the idea of a clock going crazy and gaining sentience. In this manner the other two pieces accompanying the clock above are entitled "A Reconstructed Vision" & "A Caged Heart", components of the inanimate mechanism gaining sentience.

It's was fun to do this piece since I have been always attracted to the idea of mechanical things gaining wisdom and emotion. Here below is another exhibit piece from 2004 or 2005 I think, entitled "The Sentient Bookshredder" 

(from my deviantart account) About this piece: The People of the Bookless hates books. Actually they hate any reading material. Upon sight of these things, they immediately call their police to quarantine and eventually dispose the contraband. The disposal crew deliver the materials to book-shredding factories, where hundreds of machines called Bookshredders grind the books down to useless pieces of paper... never to be read again.

One day, one of the mechanical Bookshredders gained sentience. It continued devouring the books, but it didn't shred out pieces of paper. It gave out something else... It consumed the books and created IDEAS...
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I want to take this steampunk and sentience thing further, maybe through tactile form (since I'm piling up mounds of nuts and bolts and metal junk in my room already) or something else. I'd love to make these mechanical things actually work if possible, even if it's just a simple swing or pull or hit, but robotics and mechanical engineering are totally alien to me right now.