Stan Wannet

Stan Wannet is both artist and engineer. Wannet spent two years employed as a hardware developer with V2 in Rotterdam. He subsequently worked on a series of commissions and collaborations in the Netherlands, China and South Africa.


Stan Wannet brings dead animals back to life and gives them skills they normally lack. Such as the engines he fitted to dead hares, enabling one to use a pen to write out mathematical formulas while another typed on an antique typewriter. He also got motorised hamsters to turn wheels in cages in such a way that they generated electricity. Wannet changes organisms into machines, while at the same time providing them with a personality of their own.

Stan Wannet’s work is not limited to dead animals; he also created a complex chess machine. The machine plays out the last part of the game between world champion Garry Kasparov and the chess computer, Deep Blue. Onlookers will never manage to win from Deep Blue either. In addition to being an artist, Wannet is also an engineer, who always creates his works of art independently, right from the design stage up to and including the robotics.

By Yasmijn Jarram