Novelty Automation

Novelty Automation is a unique arcade located behind an unassuming shopfront, serving as a playful, satirical antidote to modern commercial entertainment. Created by engineer and cartoonist Tim Hunkin, it features handmade, mechanical games that offer bizarre, tongue-in-cheek adventures. Rather than standard digital screens, you will find clunky levers, pulleys, and physical mechanisms that invite you to perform tasks like money laundering, attempting to win a Nobel Prize, or even navigating a simulated nuclear reactor. The machines are designed to be hilariously irreverent, often poking fun at contemporary society and its technological obsessions. It functions as both an art installation and a tribute to the long history of British automata, continuing a tradition of mechanical amusement that once thrived in London’s piers and fairgrounds.