Animatronic Curiosity

“The larger than life-size grey figure wears clothes that flutter in the wind and is mounted on a plinth bearing no name but a very hard to read Latin inscription..” (Price, 2008)

The Statue on Summer Street in Southwark is right by my home; something I walk past every second day if not every day. I never noticed that it moved before, and came as a shock to me one day as I was walking past and I saw the head of the statue moving!

The piece is called The Monument to the Unknown artist, but it still feels unusual not to hardly have any information as to where this statue is from, who the artist is and what his purpose was. There is only one small inscription on the side which reads in Latin, “Quid quid latine dictum sit, altum videtur” which upon a quick search I found translates to “Anything said in Latin sounds profound”. If you look at this from a different perspective, it is quite refreshing to have a statue with less information and more ‘action’ so to speak.

There are accounts of many people who go up to the statue and try to strike a pose, and when they don’t notice the statue it would strike a similar pose or make up one on it’s own. The interactive aspect of this public art piece is something that almost anyone and everyone can take part in, if they have the patience to wait for the statue.

A photographer Jessica Mulley wrote “As his head and eyes follow the movement of is hand as the brush traces its repetitive image in the air. It’s quite striking and, indeed, a little spooky in some ways. Catch it in the corner of your eye and you’re not quite sure whether its moved or not, so subtle is the change.” (Mulley, 2009). People go up to the statue, strike a pose and wait for it to move. A lot of people get frustrated when it doesn’t move, and a lot of people see the statue make small changes that make it very close to life.

The statue itself is animatronic, and upon doing some research, I found out that the use of sneakily positioned cameras map your body pose in 3D, and feed it to the statue who then copies your pose. This statue is a real hidden gem in the city of London, and as a piece of public art, does a very good job of interacting with the people that come up to it.

NoWhere Island…Where Exactly?

An island constructed mainly as a sculptural piece was created by artist Alex Hartley and produced by Bristol Art Organisers called Situations, the project took off on a journey around to form a part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad in summer 2012. Situations wrote on their site, “Nowhereisland is above all sculptural – a provocative and ambitious act of material displacement by the artist, which challenged our assumptions about the fixity of landscape.”

The popularity grew and the ‘nation’ of Nowhere Island quickly had more than 23,000 citizens, had travelled 2,500 miles and was greeted by thousands of people at harbours in South West shores of England. The project  gained a big following of people who call themselves Nowherians, and they come together and share their ideas and create rules for the island. In the one year duration of the project an entire community of people was built, who had their own input, putting forward ideas such as “no taxes,” and “free public toilets”.

As a piece of public art, it succeeds in involving the public in an interactive way, bringing them together. However, as public art it does too face some controversy, especially in relation to how much money was spent to fund its creation. Alex Hartley was given 500,000, and many people like Leo Hickman of The Guardian could argue that “we are constantly being told that every penny of public money counts,” and “We could all probably think of more urgent ways to spend that sort of money.” (Hickman, 2011) He goes on to say that he believes that it could “be wiser to spread it across the dozens of arts projects in desperate need of funding, rather than hand it to one lucky recipient”

People gathered from different types of lifestyles and welcomed Nowhere Island in high fashion. I find it strange how nobody was allowed to go onto the Island, but people could sign up to become a citizen  of a community. Alex Hartley found the island in the Norwegian glaciers, and when he finally got the funding by the Arts Council, went back and excavated the chunk of land they called the “island”. Taking it away from where he originally found it, making it into an art piece and tugging it around makes the piece lose it’s originality.

ArcelorMittal Orbit Structure

In the middle of NOWHERE, the ArcelorMittal Orbit structure towers above both the Olympic Stadium and the Aquatic Centre that surround it.
Designed by Anish Kapoor and Cecil Balmond for the London Olympics 2012, the structure stands tall in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

From afar, my first opinions of the structure was that it definitely stood out in comparison to its neighbours, but not necessarily in a good way. On a grey, dismal and cold day, the structure seemed lost and abandoned, almost like an incomplete project no one bothered to finish. It almost struck me as the start to a theme park; it almost looked like the start to a wild and wacky ride that was ‘soon to be’.

Getting right outside the structure itself, my feelings were a little mixed: I was anxious, one to get to the top to see what it was like, and two of how I knew I was going to feel being at the top, standing on a thin metal plate almost 376 feet high (in case you were wondering, I’m not too good with heights). Nonetheless, I was happy to know we weren’t about to WALK up the side!

Getting to the giant brass cone-like structure by the base of the structure, it did not match with the rest of the designs and there was an imbalance of material used. I didn’t understand the purpose of it being there; it seemed useless and more like a decoration piece that can allow you to play with the acoustics of the seemingly detached part. Going up the elevator we could hardly see outside the small portholes, and when we got to the top, we were confused by the existence of the giant curved mirrors, finding it mildly amusing but with no relation to the ‘whole picture’ so to speak.
Anish Kapoor says that “I wanted the sensation of instability, something that was continually in movement… it is an object that cannot be perceived as having a singular image from any one perspective.” (Glancey, 2012), and I believe instability is what he achieved.

While I can imagine how there must have been a lot of people who came out and crowded the area during the time of the Olympics, looking at it in perspective at the time of our visit, the surrounding area seemed more or less abandoned and with construction work going on our view from the platform was sort of ruined.

Travelling between platforms and eventually coming down off the side of the structure (well the other did anyway, my nervousness with heights took me straight to the elevator), I still felt disappointed that it ad not been as magnanimous as I had wanted it to be, or had pictured it in my head. The only exciting thing about the public art was the way my heart raced while I was at the top standing outside in the wind!