Automata, a Datalounge Moment of Reflection and Solace

Breathtaking

Why isn’t she wearing any pants, or a skirt?

Louis's court really had all of the coolest shit. No wonder the peasants were so butt hurt.

R3 = Louise Linton

I wanted to add a few more of these wonderful pieces from the Met show a few years ago. Someone on Youtube commented "He even has wheels like a real monk."

Musical Automaton Clock with Spinet and Organ, ca. 1625. Veit Langenbucher (1587–1631) and Samuel Bidermann and Son (1540–1622). German, Augsburg. Silver, brass, iron, gilding, ebony, hardwood, parchment, leather, textile, paint.

(love the black gloved hand at the beginning)

The machine writes through the hand of the small statuette seated at its top, one of the first mechanical writing figures in human form. This video shows the mechanisms inside the sphere that produce its precise movements. Up to 107 words can be preprogrammed by the arrangement of pegs on a barrel. The figure can also be set via a hand-worked control to appear to write from dictation; this technology that presaged the first typewriter.

Miraculous Writing Machine, 1760. Friedrich von Knaus (1724–1789). Austrian, Vienna. Iron, brass, bronze (cast, some colored), paper, wood (with marbleized stucco, gilding). Technisches Museum, Vienna

This one is really amazing, it writes and draws.

Automaton Clock in the Form of Diana on Her Chariot, ca. 1610. South German, probably Augsburg. Case: ebony, bronze (gilded); dials: silver (partially enameled); movement: iron, brass. Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven

Maillardet's automaton, Philadelphia.

We are forgetting one of the oldest, I believe...

I believe it's to show the automation mechanism which is underneath her dress. In this video from 2010 when it was still in the Arts de Metier, she has a skirt, described as fragile, then in the next scene the skirt has been removed.

Looks like some of the footage in this video was used later in the one OP posted.

R12 was for R2, sorry.

Genius.

I love this Paris Review blog post about automatons, now I want to see the one they described as being so spooky it caused a German tourist to freak out and try to flee!

It's pretty amazing that it survived the French Revolution.

R10 If you read to the bottom it mentions that this one was the inspiration for Brian Selznick’s illustrated novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret, which has a similar automata at the center of the story. Though the book is about 2 1/2 inches thick, a good potion of it are amazingly detailed black and white pictures, which tell the story visually in interludes.

Scorcese went on to adapt it as the movie Hugo, which was one of Asa Butterfield’s first films. Sacha Baron Cohen is in it as well as the heavy. Here’s a clip of them finally activating the automata in the movie.

Here’s a nicely done piece by CBS Sunday Morning about the Franklin Institute automata and includes an interview with Brian Selznick as well. Brian is gay and his family does have historic connections to Hollywood.

Candy Spelling collected automata before she sold the mansion. That's enough reason for them to be a DL obsession.

The Peacock Clock. Winter Palace, St. Petersburg. A gift from Potemkin to Catherine the Great.

Verifcatia of Automata?