Fly Me Right

posted by Lisa

'machine for imitating insect flight' Marey

Watercolour by E Valton, 1869

yall look at this site

http://www.ctie.monash.edu.au/hargrave/marey.html

I've been enamoured of the Marey photos where he put people in black suits with white stripes and recorded the movement of the body. I'd like to try some Marey - influenced video experiments.

this other site looks good too, more of Marey's work:

http://www.expo-marey.com
but only the french part of the site works.

Étienne-Jules Marey's 'machine for imitating insect flight'
Early in 1869 Marey constructed a very delicate machine to demonstrate the flight of an insect and the figure-8 shape it produced during its movement. His artificial insect, with a body formed by a drum containing compressed air, could move up, down, and even diagonally.

"A mechanism actuated by an air pump produces alternate raising and lowering of a pair of wings constructed to the same design as those of the insects, formed, that is to say, with a rigid framework to the front and a flexible surface behind, made of rubber supported by thin steel shafts ... the small model which I present to the Académie [des Sciences, on 15 March 1869] develops a tractive force which may be measured by the dynamometer and which represents the raising of a weight of eight to ten grams. ... If the tip of one of the wings of this artificial insect is gilded, we see that all the movements and changes of shape in the flight of the real insect are reproduced in the mechanical apparatus."

sculptor staying with me - related work

This sculptor Sean Derry is coming down to do a piece for Art in Action and he is staying with us for a weekend while he does some research. I just read a description of his work he did for The Scuplture Center:

Sean Derry creates a site-specific installation for The Sculpture Center based on experimental environmental interactions using helium, balloons, water, and electronic speakers and microphones. The installation is derived from his outdoor experimental flight of a tethered large red balloon in the sky and the use of recording devices in an effort to “hear the clouds”. Derry brings the results of his experiment into the gallery in order for the viewer to witness and listen to the results. Environmental sounds play throughout the run of the exhibition.

if anyone wants to meet him let me know - it may be good to see images of this piece or what else he's done. for Art in Action, I think he wants to install one of his giant inflatable cars in an abandoned parking lot.- Courtney

de Tocqueville, from Bruce

This is an excerpt from Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville in the section entitled "Why American Writers and Orators Often Use an Inflated Style." Considering human flight is an American invention I thought this might have a random connection.

"We have also seen, that, amongst democratic nations, the sources of poetry are grand, but not abudnant. They are exhausted: and poets, not finding the elements of the ideal in what is real and true, abandon them entirely and create monsters. I do not fear that the poetry of democratic nations will prove insipid, or that it will fly too near the ground; I rather apprehend that it will be forever losing itself in the cloouds, and that it will range at last to purely imaginary regions. I fear that the productions of democratic poets may often be surcharged with immense and incoherent imagery, with exaggerated descriptions and strange creations; and that the fantastic beings of their brain may sometimes make us regret the world of
reality."

Another one from the section entitled "Equality Suggests to the Americans the Idea of the Indefinite Perfectibility of Man" goes like this:

"I accost an American sailor, and inquire why the ships of his country are built so as to last but for a short time; he answers without hesitation, that the art of navigation is every day making such rapid progress, that the finest vessel would become almost useless if it lasted beyond a few years. In these words, which fell accidently, and on a particular subject, from an
uninstructed man, I recognized the general and systematic idea upon which a great people direct all their concerns.

Aristocratic nations are naturally to apt to narrow the scope of human perfectibility; democratic nations, to expand it beyond reason."

animate drawings

something that would be fun would be to animate drawings, some of Jeff's sketches for instance, to be used in the show.

balloon head

I have an image of 50-70 helium balloons on long strings, tied to someone's hair, all their (longish, sorry J) hair.
it would be quite a prep every night.
of course that 's where video can come in... but it would be great to see it live. do you think someone could actually float away?
balloons could be blown up over the course of the performance, to try to get someone to fly away...