I don’t usually write about what I watch on TV. Mostly because I don’t watch a lot of it, or that when I do it’s to try and turn off from thinking so the stuff that I watch tends to be mostly without merit. I feel I must however mention the two things I have seen in the last year that were fantastic. They are slightly connected in that they both feature fantastical characters, and an element of the uncanny, but I’ll let you make your own mind up whether you like one, both or neither. First up is a programme I caught the end of one evening when my mum and dad were visiting, Nina Conti’s Her Masters Voice.
I don’t really think I can do justice to what it’s about, because of the depths of subjects it encapsulates and like a good book, everyone who sees it will come away with something slightly different. I can however reveal that it features many puppets and the very talented ventriloquist Nina Conti. It’s available on DVD or if you are lucky you might be able to find it on iplayer I would urge you to clear and evening, sit down with a good glass of wine and watch it. (Having only caught the end that’s what I did (after my parents had gone home) and I was blow away by it). http://www.ninaconti.net/store/
The second I watched last night on BBC4 (only by chance as I caught a trailer & it looked too interesting to ignore). It was a programme all about automatons, which from my brief internet search this morning, are currently enjoying somewhat of a renaissance (with films like Hugo probably helping).
Awesomely the programme last night focused on the carefully crafted early automaton built in Paris, London and the rest of Europe mostly by clockmakers. There were some really fantastic examples on the programme of different types of machine, most which ran off a combination of CAM mechanisms (when we made these at school I was never that interested but seeing what could be achieved from stacks of CAMs in sequence was mind blowing).
My favourite automaton featured on the programme has to be the mechanical swan, which was built in 1773 by John Joseph Merlinand which, believe it or not still resides in a gallery here in the UK. The Swan is set to work at 2pm each day for its roughly 40 second performance (I had seen it before but had assumed it was in a foreign gallery, will definitely be planning a trip to see it soon).
The drawing and writing machines the programme featured were certainly as clever if not quite as decorative. I was however a bit intimidated by the more than life size chess player below, who cannot be considered to be 100% automaton as he used a human helper (hidden in his cabinet, with a view upwards to the underside of the board, and who would tell the automaton which move to play). I like chess but I don’t think I’d be sticking around to play against him!
The programme also touched upon some automaton no longer in existence, like famous early automaton The Flute Player which was full/human size and dressed as a shepherd and used mechanical lungs and a metal tongue to play the flute. The builder (Jacques de Vaucanson) studied human anatomy and used this knowledge to make a machine play music without having a separate music box.
Unusually this automaton was also clad in real skin (this last detail I still find a little bit spooky). It’s believed that this and a brother automaton that played the tambourine were both destroyed during the revolution, but plenty of other beautiful examples survive and indeed there are lots of modern day automaton makers still practicing the craft. For further reading I found these two sites really interesting http://www.cabaret.co.uk/ and http://automatomania.co.uk/about/
