Naess believed that the two outlooks could coexist, but Watson argues that they are in profound conflict.

NEWYORKER: Neptune��s Navy

The machines themselves can take anywhere from a few weeks to several years to build, says Elliot Naess, a 10-year kinetic veteran who has built three race-ready sculptures from scratch.

CNN: Art in motion at the Kinetic Grand Championship

Early in the book, Kavenna describes her meeting with a kindred spirit, the philosopher and mountaineer Arne Naess, who mourns the loss of the personal relationship to nature once offered by living in the far north under the heaven of stars.

FORBES

"Acing" the race, or "getting through the race without demerits, " as Naess says, is the goal for a handful of purists at the championship each year -- a task much easier said than done given the myriad different, and often unexpected, obstacles along the way.

CNN: Art in motion at the Kinetic Grand Championship

Hornaday, and in the Deep Ecology movement, associated with Arne Naess, a Norwegian philosopher and mountaineer, who, in the early seventies, noticed that some environmentalists had begun arguing that no species was of greater worth than another, and that ecosystems should be protected for their own sake, not simply to benefit mankind.

NEWYORKER: Neptune��s Navy