Academy Award winning animator Bruce Petty takes a satirical look at the contraptions that shape our lives. Education, sex, finance, globalism, art, media, medicine, law, government and even the brain are all transformed into evolving machines. Each five-minute episode begins with the basic concept at the nucleus of the machine. Then, combining high-energy, free-form illustrations with photographs, paintings and other snippets from the real world, Petty takes us on an anarchic journey through history as each apparatus builds to its complex contemporary form. We see how these contraptions are not immutable, but shaped by society, our changing ideas and our actions. We are encouraged to question and laugh at the haphazard and often faulty mechanisms that drive these machines that, in turn, run our lives. Narrated by Andrew Denton, this witty, provocative and entertaining series reveals these contraptions to be constructions of a very human kind - imperfect, sometimes unpredictable and always subject to change. A Film Australia National Interest Program. Produced with the assistance of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 2011 National Film and Sound Archive of Australia. Executive Producer: Stefan Moore, Anna Grieve. Producer: Deborah Szapiro. Director: Bruce Petty. Writer: Bruce Petty. Narrator/Presenter: Andrew Denton. Principal Cast: Lee Perry (Character Voices), Sally Patience (Character Voices), Lucie Blinco (Character Voices).