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Showing posts with label automata. Show all posts
Showing posts with label automata. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 31, 2017
Chester: legend of the haunted automaton
Saturday, June 10, 2017
Dead monk in the middle of the road
Automaton friar in action
Description
This automaton of a friar can imitate a walking man thanks to a wind-up mechanism. The friar's eyes move from side to side, while one arm raises a rosary's cross for an automated kiss and the other arm strikes the chest in the "mea culpa" gesture from the Catholic Latin Mass. This friar was probably made in Spain or southern Germany and is about 450 years old. It has been in the museum's collections since the late 1970s. This video depicts the original figure. The clothing it wears are from the 1970s. The automaton and other mechanical figures, precursors to today's robots, are in the collections of the Division of Work and Industry, National Museum of American History.
Hey, this might not mean much to YOU, but it's a real bonus to my week. It seems if you wait around long enough, that missing video will eventually show up on YouTube. In this case, it's been missing since about 1567.
I've been fascinated with this guy (affectionately called Dead Monk, though I doubt if that was his real name - probably Saint Whatever) for years now, but couldn't find much about him. There are older, much more distorted and pixilated versions of this video, which I think plays along with the exhibit in the Smithsonian. I doubt if the old (old, OLD-old) man is still in operation - I think he spends most of his time in this glass case - but you never know. His 450-year-old joints may just be able to still perform.
This boxing stance implies that he's been sparring with Sister Ignatius in his spare time, perhaps explaining how he has managed to stay fit for 4 1/2 centuries. If I ever got to see this marvel in person, I think I'd turn cartwheels of joy.
I've written about automata before - and a creepier mechanical genre you never saw, the unliving dolls of all time. Now that there are so many more decent videos around, it's probably time to look at them again.
And Dead Monk animations! Watch this space for more.
I've written about automata before - and a creepier mechanical genre you never saw, the unliving dolls of all time. Now that there are so many more decent videos around, it's probably time to look at them again.
And Dead Monk animations! Watch this space for more.
Friday, August 28, 2015
Thursday, September 25, 2014
Enchanted (haunted?) dolls
I have yet to see any really decent video of Siegfried's Museum of Mechanical Musical Instruments in Rudesheim, Germany. It looks like a fascinating place, with over 350 examples of antique self-playing instruments, some going back over 200 years, but all the videos are shot by tourists, raw footage unedited, with priorities that simply baffle me. Most linger for several minutes on a hideous thing that plays six out-of-tune violins at once, and a not-very-old gramophone playing Doris Day singing Que Sera, Sera while everyone sways and sings along with misty eyes. All the items in the videos follow a certain sequence, so obviously this is an organized, preset tour, and only a few instruments are playable; most are probably too frail with age, which is too bad because the wheezy, sometimes off-pitch sound is definitely the best part.
But I'm quiffed at one thing. (Is that a word?) Squicked, too, but that's something I want. The last exhibit is simply spectacular, an automaton orchestrion unlike anything ever made before. And I really can't show it to you unless I post a very lousy video that only shows it from one side. The tourists all seem to wander away from this, uninterested, when it is by far the most fascinating and rare piece in the collection (which is doubtless why they save it 'til last). I don't know how many figures there are in this, but I think it's around 30, and they are each playing a musical instrument in jerky fashion while wheezy, creepy, circus-y music plays in the background. Just my cup of tea! But the fact that nobody seems to realize what a spectacle this is means no one has ever properly video'd it. You get, at best, 30 seconds shot from an extreme angle, or an annoyingly bobbing-up-and-down shot over a lot of bald heads, or the glare of the glass cabinet. I can't edit YouTube videos, and for once a gif just won't do it, so all I can do is. . . oh I don't want to do this!! But here it is. I'll explain later. . .
I wish there were a way to shorten or otherwise edit the boring parts, and take a decent shot panning this amazing, one-of-a-kind work of art character-by-character. As I will show you in the totally-inadequate stills, not all the figures are human, adding an extra dimension of creepiness to the thing.
What amazes me right away is what good shape these are in. They must have been extremely carefully-protected from dust, sunlight, dampness, over-dryness, and anything else that would bleach out colours and shrivel up fabric.
The automaton/orchestrion was created by one Bernhard Dufner, and so far I can't even find a date because there is NEVER any information on YouTube with the videos! This whole subject is thinly-documented, though there are many dry lists and catalogue numbers on lousy old sites that haven't been updated in 10 years, with links that don't work worth a hoot. With no photos or videos, these are obviously meant only for those auction-obsessed collectors who are trying to fill an abyss within.
The cabinet itself is exquisite, as is shown by long shots which seem to dwarf the creepy, crazy, magnificent dolls within. It's a pity we can't see each doll in closeup and even handle it. Come to that, I don't think I'd want to handle a gorilla in a dress. But here is where National Geographic needs to get in there and take extreme closeups of these things, because they are truly remarkable.
And creepy.
Dear God, I hope these are gorillas and not some hideous representation of black people! If it matches the caricatures of the day, it might be, rendering it even more creepy.
A long shot of the cabinet. Can you smell the old wood? Who was this made for? I must at least try to dig out some information. Imagine having this taking up half your living room. And wouldn't it be fascinating (another National Geographic special!) to see the workings of the thing, to take off the back and peer in? Imagine the feat of engineering that brought this into being.
And here he is, Siegfried, master of the House of Creepy Magic, looking just as strange and Gandalf-like as you would expect him to be. He didn't create any of these bizarre instruments, but merely presides over it all. Never mind, watch the video, start it at 2:12 and watch to the end. And try to image what it's really like.
Blogger's P. S.: a big aha, but at the same time a depressingly small one: I found a journal of mechanical instruments, music boxes and stuff, and the list of articles went back to 1978. Obviously I couldn't/wouldn't read the whole thing, but after some sifting I found the name of Bernhard Dufner. He was not at all who I thought he was: an American, for one thing, working in the late 1800s when these contraptions were at their peak of popularity. (Imagine how business must have fallen off with the invention of the phonograph, not to mention photography and motion pictures.)
So his magnificent moving-doll orchestrion was likely built towards the end of the 19th century, though the costumes look baroque. It explains the still-vibrant colors, when fabric dyes had become much brighter and more stable. One wonders if the style of clothing was intentional, a way of "antique-ing" the thing to look more valuable than it really was. And what was he doing in Buffalo, New York, if he did such fine, European-standards work? Or was it some other Buffalo? The article, with its flyspeck type, was in PNG and not reproduceable, so I literally had to print this, scan and crop it. But it looks mighty handsome, doesn't it? Dufner is still pretty obscure, and Google searches netted me exactly nothing. But he did produce one strikingly original piece, still exhibited 150 years later on the other side of the world. The story is so unlikely that it could only be true.
Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book
It took me years to write, will you take a look
Order The Glass Character from:
Barnes & Noble
Thistledown Press
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Dead monk in the middle of the road: the ultimate automaton
From Wikipedia, under the entry of Automata:
In 1562, the heir to the throne of Spain sustained a serious head wound that caused him fever and blindness. His father, the king, thought all was lost, until the heir was reportedly cured by the miraculous corpse of a Spanish monk that had been dead for 100 years.In his desperation, the king had allowed the monk's mummified body to be placed in bed with his sick son and he was so thankful when this dubious medical treatment actually worked that he commissioned a moving replica of the dead monk.
You see? You see how wrong I was about automatons (or automata, if you want to get technical about it - just don't say automaTRON, as too many people on YouTube videos did - collectors!!). I thought they were a Victorian invention, maybe because of that scene in A Christmas Carol where Tiny Tim is staring into the store window as they take away the wooden boat he covets. But soon he is beaming again with his crooked English teeth, because of the jouncing clown that leers and laughs at him, which I just ASSUMED was an automaton.
Which maybe it was, but it was a pretty shitty one. If this monk-on-wheels (currently moldering away in the Smithsonian) is indeed dated back to 1562, there's more going on here than I thought. For one thing, I must have seriously underestimated human technology. (BTW, there's no sound on this video, probably to disguise the creaks, groans, whirrs and thuds these creepy homunculi produce).
I can't begin to figure out how these things move, and when I see the inner workings of them they look like giant pocket watches ticking away. I don't see how else they could have stayed in motion, though, like a pocket watch, I assume they would have to be wound at intervals.
My readings about automata are fascinating, if pretty strange. The medieval monk-y business is nothing compared to this far-fetched Biblical tale of automatiana:
According to Jewish legend, Solomon used his wisdom to design a throne with mechanical animals which hailed him as king when he ascended it; upon sitting down an eagle would place a crown upon his head, and a dove would bring him a Torah scroll. It's also said that when King Solomon stepped upon the throne, a mechanism was set in motion. As soon as he stepped upon the first step, a golden ox and a golden lion each stretched out one foot to support him and help him rise to the next step. On each side, the animals helped the King up until he was comfortably seated upon the throne.
But this one takes the cake, and I am sure was written as a form of satire, perhaps to take a swipe at people's wide-eyed awe when watching these things. I can imagine them exclaiming about how lifelike they were, even if they were about as animated as that monk's mummified corpse.
In ancient China, a curious account of automata is found in the Lie Zi text, written in the 3rd century BC. Within it there is a description of a much earlier encounter between King Mu of Zhou (1023-957 BC) and a mechanical engineer known as Yan Shi, an 'artificer'. The latter proudly presented the king with a life-size, human-shaped figure of his mechanical handiwork (Wade-Giles spelling):
The king stared at the figure in astonishment. It walked with rapid strides, moving its head up and down, so that anyone would have taken it for a live human being. The artificer touched its chin, and it began singing, perfectly in tune. He touched its hand, and it began posturing, keeping perfect time...As the performance was drawing to an end, the robot winked its eye and made advances to the ladies in attendance, whereupon the king became incensed and would have had Yen Shih [Yan Shi] executed on the spot had not the latter, in mortal fear, instantly taken the robot to pieces to let him see what it really was. And, indeed, it turned out to be only a construction of leather, wood, glue and lacquer, variously coloured white, black, red and blue. Examining it closely, the king found all the internal organs complete—liver, gall, heart, lungs, spleen, kidneys, stomach and intestines; and over these again, muscles, bones and limbs with their joints, skin, teeth and hair, all of them artificial...The king tried the effect of taking away the heart, and found that the mouth could no longer speak; he took away the liver and the eyes could no longer see; he took away the kidneys and the legs lost their power of locomotion. The king was delighted.
Could Walking Baby Alive have done any better?
(I've barely looked at this site, but it looks promising, though I have no idea what it has to do with Johnny Depp. Except that maybe he's an automaton.)
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