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MACHINE DREAMS

Alexei Taylor, Author

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Final essay - Proposal

A boy, looking at the very most five years old, sits at a desk and skillfully writes letter by letter. It dips its goose feather into the ink well, and shakes its hand once or twice to prevent the ink from smudging on the paper. The boy’s eyes follow where he is writing, as if concentrating not to make a mistake. Indeed he doesn't. This boy is a creation of Pierre Jaquet-Droz, an eighteenth century Swiss watchmaker. Jaquet-Droz made  a set of three automata, “The Writer”, “The Draughtsman” and “The Musician” as a collaborative effort together with his son Henri-Louise and Jean-Frederic Leschot. Among the three, “The Writer” is the most complicated. It is composed of 6000 pieces intricately working together to enact the lifelikeness of the automaton. 
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Jiwon Shin

Related:  Hugo,  Angry birds shirt tags,  Final essay background,  Hugo turns into an automaton,  Jaquet-Droz automata,  Resources,  Spectator,  Gregory Barsamian - Runner,  the Writer - inside,  The Uncanny,  The Bird's social purpose,  What makes an observer modern; Jiwon Shin,  Hybrid,  Sources of fascination (1) - Playing god,  Frans Zwartjes "Spectator" (1970),  Questions,  Aura handwritten,  Are Humanzees Possible?,  The Writer,  Technology used in automata,  Toothed wheels,  background for ethnography,  Edison's Eve: A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life,  Sources of fascination (2) - Representations of memory,  jiwon,  Gregory Barsamian - Feral Font,  Aura,  Epistemology,  Jaquet-Droz automatons,  Bershka and its connection to Angry Birds,  Angry Birds,  Hugo magic trick,  The first encounter,  Jaquet-Droz - "The Writer",  Presence footprints,  Sources of fascination (3) - Threat of automatons,  Automatons and its sources of fascination,  Matrix - The pill,  Hypothesis,  Phenakistoscope Phenakistiscope Optical Toy Fantascope,  Automata and Mimesis on the Stage of Theatre History,  The Matrix Poster,  Presence,  The digesting duck,  The ideas and values behind,  the Writer,  Bibliography,  Maintaining the Writer,  Bibliography,  Simulacra,  The Human Touch: Towards a Historical Anthropology and Dream Analysis of Self-acting Instruments,  the Writer,  Angry Birds as a social tool,  The technology behind,  Sources of fascination (4) - Mechanization of men,  Symbolic,  Nanook of the North, Robert FLAHERTY, 1921,  Development story of the Angry Birds,  Hugo and the city,  Alterity,  Persistence of vision,  Conclusion