Art, or something like it.

[infinitehotel]

There are so many other things I could post at this point, but the more time goes by the harder it is to try to sum things up.  If I've been out of touch the last few months, feel free to poke me.

But poking's not what I'm posting about today.  Today is all about dead cats transformed into remote-controlled helicopters.

Comments

[nihilistic_kid]

It's especially crazy because the cat is so bug-eyed.

[infinitehotel]

I demand no less when it happens to me!

[jostajam]

It is art. I don't have to like it, but it is art.

[perspicuity]

there's a guy who donated his skull to a theatre/opera house, hoping they'd use him for stuff. he got his wish in a grand way.

#

[infinitehotel]

I find the design a little tacky (It's a pinhole camera built on a human skull, how many useless steampunk flourishes do you really need?) but the photos are certainly appropriate to the hardware.

http://www.petapixel.com/2010/10/29/third-eye-a-human-skull-pinhole-camera/

[scholargipsy]

I don't argue that the cat-copter isn't art, and you raise a number of good points about our alienation from the physical reality of death. That said, this still squicks me, and while I'm somewhat at a loss to explain why (aside from the obvious reality of my having six cats myself), I don't really care to look too long at it. But neither do I mistake my distaste for some sort of unilateral offense.

[infinitehotel]

I never thought you would, for what it's worth. And if anything, my own thought process was in large part an exercise in trying to figure out why it didn't bother me more. For whatever reason, with the data available I felt okay about Orville. If it came out that Jansen had named him with this particular idea in mind I'd feel very different.

[whitebird]

People have stuffed pets for a long time now. (My mom half-heartedly wanted to stuff our family dog, but we wouldn't let her, even.) As a cat owner myself, I'm not even slightly disturbed by this for some reason. I don't think I want to make a helicopter out of Laptop, but, it's certainly an entertaining usage for what Orville doesn't really need any more. And, oddly, I bet he's even more loved now, than he ever would have been were he to be buried or cremated.

[infinitehotel]

That was sort of my thought. The stuffing the dog thing strikes me as trying to sidestep the idea of death, hang on to the past by not allowing the world to move on. Nothing has changed, see? Fluffy's still right here!

With this, Orville's clearly not the cat he was; he's something different that will eventually degrade, break down, and pass on too. I hope that when that happens Jansen does something suitably transformative with those remains as well.