GRGR(3) octopus 51.29

[Doug Millison]

Coincidence? In the 60s,  that bastion of "mid-century modernism", the
design studio of Charles and Ray Eames, in Venice, California (up the
Pacific coast a bit from Manhattan Beach where TRP spent some time writing
GR), prominently featured a trained octopus in a tank:

"Their studio was a reflection of their fascinations:  lathes and power
saws competed for space with antique dolls, light tables heaped with slides
of pastries and traffic signs, piles of cameras and lenses, and, jammed in
with everything else, more than a dozen fish tanks. [...] the aquarium
residents were the stars of films and slide shows that the Eames Office
made for the U.S. Department of the Interior which in the late 1960s was
planning a national aquarium in downtown Washington, D.C. What other
studio, asked to come up with an audiovisual presentation of sea life,
would have groomed its own aquatic stars? Lights were kept in place around
the tanks to ease filming. One octopus achieved celebrity as the
longest-lived member of its species known to science, thanks to a diet of
crabs bred in a neighboring tank by one of the graphic designers. 'The
octopus got to be a ham,' says Barbara Charles, a former researcher at the
office. 'Whenever the lights were turned on, it started swimming for the
camera and getting in the way.' The animal had to be given its own tank."
--"Eames The Best Seat in the House" by Doug Stewart
 _Smithsonian_ magazine , May 1999

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