O Celia Shits

이번학기에 Anthropology of Cybercultures 라는 수업을 듣고 있다. 과제로 18세기의 automata(자동으로 작동하는 인형기계, 로봇의 시초랄까)에 관한 글을 하나 읽다가 이부분 땜에 자빠짐:

A LOL-worthy quote from Jessica Riskin’s Eighteenth Century Wetware (Representations 103-104, 2003), a  required reading for the “Anthropology of Cybercultures” course taught by Lucy Suchman:

Physiological correctness, then, was a new and pervasive interest on the part of automaton designers of the mid- to late eighteenth century. Automata of this period were physiologically correct sometimes to the point of being scatological.

The leading example is Vaucanson’s defecating Duck of 1738. … Why a defecating duck? Because Vaucanson, in each of his projects, sought subjects that seemed as distant as possible from mechanism. What could be more unlike machinery, more messily organic, than defecation? Hence the snooping protagonist of Jonathan Swift’s 1730 poem, ‘‘The Lady’s Dressing Room,’’ gradually discovering that his true love’s beauty is a triumph of art over nature, has a final epiphany when he discovers her chamber pot:

“Thus finishing his grand survey,
disgusted Strephon stole away
repeating in his amorous fists,
O Celia, Celia, Celia shits.”

Here was the most natural of products, the antithesis of art.

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조나단 스위프트씨 알고보니 덕후?

요즘 세상에 태어나셨으면 온라인 작가나 미드 제작자로 대성하셨을듯.

Jonathan Swift, author of the "Lady's Dressing Room" & "Gulliver's Travels"

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위의 글에 따르면 오토마타의 정점은 지금도 시계로 유명한 스위스의 Jaquet-Droz 가문에서 만든 Writer, Organ Player, Drawer 3총사라는데, 아래 그림동이 비디오를 참조. 중간중간 연필가루를 불어 날려주고 오르간 치다 음악에 맞춰 한숨을 쉬지 않나… 거의 감정이입이 가능할 정도라 한다.

Also: Check out Jaquet-Droz family’s automata from the 18th century, also mentioned in Riskin’s article.