Machine tools as art?

Exactly, it's all art, but not if you don't think it is. Well, Machinery has stumbled across what must, we believe, be unintended industrial art in its sister magazine, Machinery Classified. Nobilla Machine Tools' adverts regularly contain elderly machine tools in a countryside setting. Some of these, Machinery believes, could quite happily fall under the art tag, either by way of an interesting juxtaposition of the industrial and the natural worlds, or by means of pure photographic setting. Here are two examples. We've chosen classic descriptive titles: Colchesters against lush grass field Turret mills and corn field Machinery has previously come across arty industrial pictures at Haas' Belgium facility. Here it is probable that photos have had the digital treatment to turn them into oil paintings. Here's an example: Five-axis cutting of an impeller on a Haas machining centre. An arty title for this might be: "Compelling impeller". Okay, so it's not a reflection of somebody's personal attention to detail or craft skill in realising an accurate representation of an object, and it's not a Lowry capturing industrial Britain of old, for example, but the end result is art, isn't it? And if not now, will it be in 50 years' time when modern machine tools like this are the Colchester lathes or Bridgeport knee mills of tomorrow? And here's a quirky industrial musical installation, not machine tools, but clearly a work of art. So, is this art? And do you have similar art you'd care to share with Machinery? On either point, email Machinery