MDDM23: A Digestionary Process

Mon Feb 25 10:32:37 CST 2002

"'The Man Voltaire call'd a Prometheus,-- to be
remember'd only for having trespass'd so ingeniously
outside the borders of Taste, as to have provided his
Automaton a Digestionary Process, whose end result
could not be distinguish'd from that found in Nature.'
   "'A mechnaickal Duck that shits?  To whom can it
matter,' Mr. Whitpot, having remov'd his Wig, is
irritably kneading it like a small Loaf, '-- who
besides a farmer would even recognize Duck Waste,
however compulsively accurate?'" (M&D, Ch. 37, p. 372)

Again, see ...

http://www.stanford.edu/group/SHR/4-2/images/MAZLISH1.GIF

As well as ...

http://www.dimensionsmagazine.com/dimtext/Schwartz/Happening_thing.html

Despite a mistake and an addendum there.  But first
...

>From Hugh Kenner, The Countefeiters: An Historical
Comedy (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1968), Ch. 1,
"Counterfeitable Man,' pp. 17-42 ...

"... by 1738 Jacques de Vaucanson (1709-1782) had
exhibited in Paris a mechnaical duck which could
waddle and splash, beat the air with detailed
feathered wings, wag its head, quack, pick up grain,
ingest this with swallowing movements, and eventually
excrete the residue: for the production of the latter
'it was necessary in a little space to construct a
chemical laboratory, to decompose the main
constitutents [of the rain] and cause them to issue
forth at will.'" (p. 29)

"A chemical laboratory, to decompose"--cf. "oven" vis
a vis Genral Pudding and Katje Borgesius a.k.a. Domina
Nocturna in Gravity's Rainbow (pp. 232-3)? Hm ...

At any rate ...

>From Catherine Liu, Copying Machines: Taking Notes for
the Automaton (Mpls: U of Minnesota P, 2000), Ch. 4,
"Getting Ahead with Machines?  The Cases of Jacques
Vaucanson and Therese des Hayes," pp. 76-105 ...

"According to Vaucanson's Description, the mechanical
duck is able to [...] take food from a hand that feeds
it, and through more neck movements pass the food into
its stomach.  He writes that in his duck, 'as in real
animals, the food is then digested there, through a
process of dissolution and not by trituration, as many
doctors claim.[...]  In the stomach, the digested
matter follows tubes, that are like the entrails of
animals until it ends up in the anus where a sphincter
allows for it expulsion.'    Vaucanson explicitly
claims that a process of digestion actually does take
place.... he limits his imitation to three aspects of
duck movement and duck anatomy:

I do not claim to offer this digestion as a perfect
digestion, capable of producing blood and nourishing
particles for the survival of the animal [...].  I
only claim to imitate the mecahnics of this action in
three ways, which are (1) the swallowing of the grain;
(2) the maceration, the cooking, or the dissolving of
the grain; (3) the expulsion of the grain in a visibly
altered form.

"The problem was that this controversial
automaton-duck depended on [...] 'une supercherie,' a
sleight-of-hand [...].  The excremental material the
automaton-duck succeeded in expelling had nothing to
do with the seeds it had swallowed; these pellets were
prepared in advance and located in a hideen container
in the posterior of the mechanical animal." (pp. 84-5)

Citing ...

Doyon, A. and Liaigre, L.  Jacques Vaucanson,
   mecanicien de genie.  Paris: Presses
   Universitaires de France, 1966.

M&D is mentioned @ Liu, p. 198, n. 19 ...

And cf. Barbara Maria Safford and Frances Terpak,
Devices of Wonder: From the World in a Box to Images
on a Screen (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute,
2001), "Revealing Technologies/Magical Domains," pp.
1-142 ...

   "The most acclaimed member of Vaucanson's trinity
of entertaining equipment, however, was the notorious
eating, digesting and defecating duck (1733-34, but
not exhibited until 1738; wherabouts unknown).... 
this barnyard variant of Philo's and Hero's bejeweled
birds eagerly swallowed kernels of grain to excrete
them in the metamorphosed shape of pellets.  Alas,
this amazing transformation proved fraudulent.  The
delicate droppings were not the natural result of
simulated peristalsis but of a secondary device
triggering the sphincter where a masticated plop lay
hidden." (p. 44)

http://www.getty.edu/bookstore/titles/devices.html

http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/devices/choice.html

And back to Kenner, The Counterfeiters ...

"This gadget meets so many of the specifications for
duckness (anatitas? duck is anas) that we can imagine
any others we like being met; and sure enough, by 1847
a Swiss named Reichsteiner had constructed an improved
version which suffered from indigestion, and simulated
abdominal contractions followed by a malodorous
evacutaion.  'The truth is,' reported a contemporary,
'that the smell which now spreads through the room
becomes almost unbearable.  We wish to express to the
artist-inventor the pleasure which this demonstration
gave us.'" (p. 30)

Citing ...

Chapuis, A. and E. Droz.  Automata.
   Neuchatel: Editions du Griffon, 1958.  233-42.

And cf. "Anatine Equivalent" @ M&D, Ch. 37, p. 379 ...

And, pace Schwartz, there is indeed a "recent automata
... on public view, that proceed[s] through each of
the digestive motions and offer up, at the end, a wet
turd."   See ...

http://www.artnet.com/magazine/reviews/fiers/fiers1-9-01.asp

http://www.time.com/time/europe/generatione/mediums/delvoye.html

http://www.lacan.com/frameXIX7.htm

At the New Museum of Contemporary Art, NYC, 25 January
2002 - 28 April 2002 ...

http://www.newmuseum.org/Press_Office/Press_Releases/Delvoye%20release.htm

http://www.newmuseum.org/exhibitions/Wim%20Delvoye/detail.htm

Zimmerman, Yona and Adrian Dannatt, eds.
   Wim Delvoye: Cloaca.  Ghent: Ludion, 2001.

Cameron, Dan, ed.  Wim Delvoye: Cloaca--New and
   Improved.  New York: Rectapublishers, 2002.

http://www.artbook.com/909015387x.html

"Members of the public are encouraged to visit the
Museum for Cloaca's daily feeding at 4.30.pm and it's
daily elimination at 2.30.pm."  Will be back ...

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