AUTOMATA
Both images are of automata by Pierre Jaquet-Droz. I haven’t fully formed my thoughts on these yet, but I find it really interesting that there’s this endless copulation between the mechanical and the organic. The machine is invented and then has natural terms applied to its performance – eg. horsepower. But then, the traits of the machine are returned to nature – eg. the source of the body’s movement as being itself a kind of engine that needs fuel etc. I guess in light of this, it’s really interesting and frankly, kind of fucked, that machines are then made in man’s image. There’s almost a religious aspect to these objects… as like, embodiments of what we kind of know to be true already.
[...] Baroque automaton finds herself in the lair of a toymaker, her creator, who uses her as the object of his gaze and [...]