Student hoping to pursue Design Engineering builds skeleton out of an old piano

Sixth Form student Surya Vijayanand has created a life-sized skeleton as part of his A Level artwork.

“The theme was ‘Fractured’,” Surya explains. “I wanted to explore the idea of deconstructing objects and transforming them into something new. The Art department had an old, redundant piano and upon opening it, I felt inspired by the arrangement of the keys, strings and hammers. These, to me, looked like the ribcage and vertebral column of a human skeleton and so I decided to take it apart and build a life-sized one.”

The entire skeleton is made from the internal components of the piano. The keys make up the bones; the strings, the nervous system; and the hammers make up the spinal cord, hands and feet.

Surya explains that he broke the construction process down into individual body parts beginning at the spinal cord, making it as rigid and sturdy as possible to support the weight of the rest of the body. He then moved onto the ribcage, each of the limbs and, finally, the skull. He then used the strings to replicate a rough representation of the nervous system.

“As I started taking things apart, I discovered tiny mechanisms that I didn’t even know existed and I realised just how complex the engineering behind this instrument was,” he adds.

Surya hopes to pursue Design Engineering at Imperial College, London in the future.

A bright future awaits, Surya; what a fantastic achievement!