This worm gear system is all that is left of Self Fulfilling Propensity & the Paradox of Primacy from its show at the SFMOMA Rental Gallery in 1985. Cranking the gears caused a small construction to slowly move down a track, stressing and ultimately breaking itself. The whole process took a month of visitors cranking the handle.

Bernie Lubell’s interactive art evolved from studies in both psychology and engineering. Shown internationally, his work includes stone age digital computers, rainstorms of chaos and nostalgia, phone booth-confessional networks, mechanisms to measure intimacy, simulations of the human heart, brain and breathing, a giant cooperative knitting machine – which is on view at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco through July 29 – and a mechanical computer that encourages working together furiously to accomplish nothing.

Awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship and an Ars Electronica Award of Distinction.