Wednesday, November 10, 2010

A New Autopsy of a Vacuum Cleaner


A new performance of an Autopsy of a Vacuum Cleaner has been represented in the highschool Cristoforo Colombo in Genova (Italy) on Friday, the 5th November. The context of the Science Festival helped to use technical metaphors in order to speak of science and technology policies in the present times.

Science Things: an Alfabeth


A play written by Vittorio Marchis, and played together with Federica Cassini.
Represented in Genova (November 4th), within the events of the "Science Festival 2010", Le cose della Scienza, is a theatre representation that uses common things to materialize the alphabet, and with them to compose science words. Played in Italian the letters/things selected are:

ALTOPARLANTE
BASTONE
CHIAVE
DISCO
ELICA
FORBICI
GUANTO
HULA_HOP
IMBUTO
LAMPADINA
MANUBRIO
NASTRO ADESIVO
OROLOGIO
PENTOLA
QUADRO
RUBINETTO
SEDIA
TROTTOLA
UNCINO
VERNICE
ZUCCHERO

At the end all the things are assembled together to build the Science Totem.

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Myosotis mechanica M.


Eradicated from the Stadio delle Alpi in Turin and transplanted to a bed of the Politecnico, I hope that it will grow.

Friday, May 28, 2010

Either the Accordion or a Bicycle...




Torino, Unione Culturale "Franco Antonicelli", May 19th, 2010





Torino, Fondazione Merz, May 27th, 2010.
(a special thank to MuoviEquilibri,
to Marco Bolle and Gabriele De Carlo)

Also for kids...




During the OpenDoors Day (Bimbi in Ufficio con Mamma e PapĂ ) at Politecnico di Torino on May 21st, the Autopsy of a Computer is an attractive and magnetic event.

Saturday, May 15, 2010

... and moreover: the Autopsy of a Bicycle



The bicycle is probably one of the most powerful engines that will survive to the industrial revolution. In the Land of In-between, among society fantasy and technology, the bicycle has the power to modify our minds.

Sunday, May 2, 2010

Some years ago...

The Autopsy of a Wash Machine was the start of a new innovative series of theatre-lectures: here the playbill.
Then came the typewriter, the telephone, the clock, the kWh-Meter, the electric bulb, the record player, the telescope,... (see the complete list)

Saturday, May 1, 2010

Coming soon...


The Autopsy of an Accordion is a live-performance inbetween music and technology, with some interesting readings taken from the Italian and International literature (Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Giuseppe Berto, Aldo Palazzeschi, Beppe Fenoglio,...)

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Some Other Autopsies of a Vacuum Cleaner

Autopsy of a Vacuum Cleaner




April 20, 2010: Northampton MA, Smith College, Autopsy of a Vacuum Cleaner, produced and performed by Vittorio Marchis.





In order to enlarge the context around the "corpse" of the vacuum cleaner, some literary texts have been read during the autopsy:

Wringer
I leave the gallery, walk east. I need to go shopping, get some decent food, organize. When I'm by myself I revert to the times when I would forget about eating, stay up all night working, go until I felt an odd sensation I'd identify after some thought as hunger. Then I'd go through the refrigerator like a vacuum cleaner, sucking in whatever there was. Leftovers. This morning there were eggs, but there are no more eggs. There's no more bread, there's no more milk. Why were there eggs and bread and milk in the first place? It must have been a stash of Jon's, he must eat there sometimes. Or could it have been that he got this stuff for me? It's hardly believable. I will buy oranges, yogurt without the jam. I will have a positive attitude, take care of myself, I'll feed myself enzymes, and friendly bacteria. These good thoughts carry me until I'm right downtown.
(Margaret Atwood, Cat's Eye)

No other book of Nathaniel Hawthorne is so deep, so dual, and so complete as The Scarlet Letter: this great allegory of the triumph of sin. […] But there are good parables, and wonderful dark glimpses of early Puritan America, in Twice Told Tales. The House of the Seven Gables has 'atmosphere'. The passing of the old order of the proud, bearded, black-browed Father: an order which is slowly ousted from life, and lingeringly haunts the old dark places. But comes a new generation to sweep out even the ghosts, with these new vacuum cleaners. No ghost could stand up against a vacuum cleaner. The new generation is having no ghosts or cobwebs. It is setting up in the photography line, and is just going to make a sound financial thing out of it. For this purpose all old hates and old glooms, that belong to the antique order of Haughty Fathers, all these are swept up in the vacuum cleaner, and the vendetta-born young couple effect a perfect understanding under the black cloth of a camera and prosperity. Vivat Industria! Oh, Nathaniel, you savage ironist! Ugh, how you'd have hated it if you'd had nothing but the prosperous 'dear' young couple to write about! If you'd lived to the day when America was nothing but a Main Street. You can't idealize hard work. Which is why America invents so many machines and contrivances of all sort: so that they need do no physical work.
(D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930), Studies in Classic American Literature, Chapter 8 - Hawthorne's Blithedale Romance).


Movie references:
- Who's Minding the Store? a comedy film directed by Frank Tashlin and starring Jerry Lewis. It was released on November 28, 1963 by Paramount Pictures. (a video clip)


- I Want to Break Free, song performed by Queen, written by bassist John Deacon, and featured on album The Works (1984). The music video, directed by David Mallet, was a parody of the northern British soap opera Coronation Street.

- Wall-E meets a vacuum cleaner (a Pixar promo movie)

- The Hoffnung - Vacuum Cleaner (1960), a BBC Comedy Cartoon Animation, by Gerard Hoffnung.

Disclaimer: images and movies (if not referring directly to the event) have been taken from internet sites to which are directly linked.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

After a long silence

After a long silence, stimulated by the friends that invited me at the University of Massachusetts, I converted an obsolete my blog into a new one, where smells and machines combine together under the paradigm of the "autopsy".
Autopsy, from the ancient Greek, means to examine directly and personally an object.
In the world of multimedia it is necessary to re-use our hands (and the five senses).


Northampton MA, Smith College, april 20, 2010: Vacuum Cleaner Autopsy