The Frost Bank Tower isn’t the only Great-Horned-Owl-like structure in downtown Austin. There are a pair of ten feet tall owls on turnstile pedestals located at the northeastern corner of 2nd Street’s Butterfly Bridge. Kempelen’s Owls, as they are referred as are named after the reknowned Hungarian poet & author Wolfgang Von Kempelen. No wonder these owls are mechanical. Kempelen himself dabbled in robotics in the late 18th century. The Austin owls are a part of A.I.P.P., or Art in Public Places, and are a permanent public interactive sculpture meant to foster curiosity by passerbys of all ages. The pair of Great Horned owls are constructed of layered metal and composite materials, as they perch atop dodecahedrons and silently observe their surroundings. Besides the exciting aspect that these owls can be rotated by a Lazy-Susan-like device underneath theie circular benches, my favorite feature is that the eyes on both owls light up at night along with the twelve-sided three-dimensional geometric figures known as dodecahedrons.