Topical Guide 567
Mark Dorset
Gadgets: Fantastical, Useless, Self-Destructive
Where Do You Stop? Chapter 1:
The fantastic contraptions on Flo and Freddie’s show were mechanical or electromechanical. In every case, a contraption’s announced purpose was accomplished—if it was accomplished—with a great deal of clattering and clanking and whizzing and whirring. Wheels turned, gears spun, armatures moved, bells rang, lights flashed. Many—it would probably be more accurate to say most—of the machines seemed to be failures. That is, they failed to accomplish what their inventors claimed they would. Many others seemed to have no purpose at all, and their inventors never even claimed any for them. [They] hummed and spun and rattled and clanked […] into a heap of scrap while the audience roared and Flo and Freddie exchanged looks.
“A Self-Destructing Spectacle,” Kahn Academy:
In the spring of 1960, Homage to New York counted as one of the most exciting artistic events of the season. To create his spectacularly exploding machine, Swiss artist Jean Tinguely forged together a 23-foot-long by 27-foot-high assemblage of bicycle wheels, motors, metal drums, an old address labeling machine, a child’s go-cart, a piano, and an enameled bathtub—all disparate emblems of industrial modernism. The resulting assemblage was built to slowly self-destruct before an invited audience, and it did just that in the garden of The Museum of Modern art on a Thursday evening in March. As if to erase any doubt as to its artistic merits, Tinguely described the entire construction, laboriously painted in white, as a “a sculpture, a picture, a painting.” Delay timers were used to control the 15 motors that powered its various parts at intervals, as the artist began to dismantle other parts to assist in its self-destruction. After 30 minutes the entire thing buckled; its component parts lay smoking on the ground in ruins. As museum patrons sorted through the ruins for artistic souvenirs, the Fire Department arrived (unplanned) to put a stop to the whole affair.
See also:
Gadgets, Electronic TG 83; TG 84; TG 433; Car Phone TG 439; Kitchen TG 457; Personal Computers TG 466; Hyperlinks and Hypertext and Hypercard TG 466; Mechanical: Compressed Earth Blocks Machine TG 470
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