Page 42 - Studio Internationa - March 1971

5 The Moment of Conception
6 Inside the Brain
7 Sim One
8 Genot

transformed here by deep etch into an been used to collect information. Manikins
apocalyptic vision of a giant mechanical warrior increasingly have replaced organic subjects for
with blazing gun in a flaming city street. The many reasons, including their easy re-usability
humanoid robot Sim One belongs to the more and their more ready acceptance by the public.
peaceful surreality of biomedical engineering. Research has produced increasingly
He is a teaching tool—a tireless, accurate, sophisticated dummies. Great care is taken to
infinitely resurrectable 'patient' for budding make them correspond anthropomorphically
anaesthesiologists to practice on. and anthropometrically to representative
In recent years an increasing number of human specimens. Movements must reproduce
non-humanoid robots have been developed those the human frame would make in crash
to amplify man's abilities by operating situations. New substances simulate the
symbiotically with him. Paolozzi's image response to crash forces of human skin, viscera,
collection here ranges from prosthetic limbs tissue and bone. There has also been a continuous
to some of the new devices which repeat and attempt on the part of the designers to imitate
magnify the movements of a distant operator the details of external human appearance : ears,
at the master controls. The physical interlinking veins on the backs of hands, a pleasant face,
of man and machine inspired Paolozzi's series etc. This produces a certain poignant effect
of drawings and sculptures in the 5os in which when one sees a dummy with its flesh unzipped
man and his tools (camera, glasses, horn, car, or its face removed to expose the machinery
etc.) were physically inseparable. Many of within. It also lends a horrible sense of reality
the recent non-humanoid robots become to the actual crashes.
presences in their own right. The quality of Pages from The Aerospace Medical Library
machine personality is blatantly projected in illustrates the transition from using the human
the miniature drama of UNIMATE's arm body as a prototype for an engineering tool to
delicately embracing the egg with a face on it, using the human body as part of an experimental
and the walking machine is easily seen as a instrument. The tape dummy is a simple
modern steed prancing up a pile of logs with human substitute to test adequate seating
the human operator almost unnoticed inside motion space in high-altitude and aerospace
its belly. design. Carpenter is a pilot's tool which cannot
Manikins for Destruction are used in car-crash be separated from its user, for even when
research by the automotive industry. Crash empty it inescapably evokes the man for whom
images appeared throughout the 5os in it was created. for the good of future men. This attitude is a
Paolozzi's archives; in 1964 he produced his Aerospace medicine, even more than crash curious parallel in science to the trend in
Crash sculpture as one expression of the motif. research, needs live subject response in contemporary popular thought which sees
Recently he has been gathering data of crash situations so dangerous that death is probable man as a small mote in the total schemata of
research with emphasis on the special devices if not predictable. In such tests, animals are eternity.
developed to gather data. Not surprisingly, used. The mouse, the decompression-chamber The literature of crash research and aerospace
most of the machines simulate the human body. monkey and the anaesthetised baboon on the medicine is filled with poetry created by the
The earliest dummies were used to test ejection deceleration sled are necessary victims in the precise re-use of existing language and the
seats and parachutes for high-altitude flying. quest for information which ultimately will invention of new words to describe details of
They were soon adopted for vehicle crash protect human life. the work. The layman cannot help but conjure
research. The dummies vary from simple hard In Electrodes Etc. Arm Support Etc., man with phrases like 'pressure transducer', 'axis
torsos (used to test seat-belt restraint) to complex becomes part of the measuring research of vibration', 'motion artifact' and 'output of
human simulators filled with measuring machinery. As in Secret of Life, this is physiology the smoothing circuits'. Paolozzi has a large
equipment. as adventure. However, the focus is no longer collection of this literature. He is intrigued by
Originally much information could be on individual 'inscapes'. One man now is a the possibilities of the 'language'. In the near
gathered Only from organic bodies. Human unit standing in for all men. Voluntarily he future, it too will appear in his work.
corpses and living experimental animals have submerges his individuality to help gather data Copyright by Diane Kirkpatrick 1971

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