Automaton Ideas:

I settled on three myths and/or legends that I’d like to adapt into an automaton. This after some extensive brainstorming in relation to the concept of air or breath, which I’m trying to incorporate as a sculptural material into my practice.

Brainstorming:

The first idea is pulled from a myth belonging to coal miners: if a candle was blown out by a gust of wind, particularly below ground (where it might have also been caused by a lack of oxygen or buildup of another gas), then bad luck awaits.

The automaton would feature a small bellows and a wood-carved flame that rotates out from the wick and back, conveying the fact that the candle gets put out.

The second idea comes from a Chilean myth of a chicken-snake basilisk that robs unsuspecting sleepers of their souls by inhaling their breath. The mechanism would be a simple string with a textured portion that gets rotated around an inner channel, imitating the path of the soul.

The final idea, and the one I’m most partial to, has to do with the idea of the “four humors” or temperaments. This was the leading medical theory of how our bodies function up until the mid 1800’s. It posited that we were composed of four main substances: blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm.

The automaton would feature four bodies rotating around a small doctor (the doctor would likely be static). As they pass by the doctor, the torsos are opened up (kind of like they are undergoing a dissection). This might be a simple static cam profile under the rotating disk that pushes up two small wires connected to each half of the torso, opening them up and closing them in turn.