About to head off overseas for an unknown period of time, with unclear destination past the first week, I did the logical thing to prepare - went to Docklands for the "Da Vinci Machines" exhibition. Yeah!!
Da Vinci and the Docklands are a strange combination. Docklands has been set up as a "destination" and "attraction" full of cafes and funky apartments and things that should bring life to a place - but it is strangely soulless and hollow. While in the Da Vinci tent pulley systems and machines of war and cogs, usually such lifeless things, are given warmth by having been so lovingly made of polished wood and rope. If you are in marvellous Melb it's worth seeing - a few minutes in the chamber of mirrors (that enable you to see yourself from every angle with one glance) is a trip out worth the admission price alone.
I came out of the exhibition with an amazing sense of his mind - brilliant and distracted at the same time. In particular, his fascination with flight is striking. Working in an era of plague and sword and cannon warfare and horsedrawn carts, he designed every conceivable way people might attempt to fly, from ornothopters (mechanical birds) to gliders to a primitive helicopter that was supposed to work my men furiously working at crank-handles to spin the huge spiral shaped fan. None ever got off the ground. Most never could. But that didn't stop him not only designing them in intricate detail but also coming up with in-flight devices for navigation and measuring wind speed etc.
He did however leave out two key components of flight in his calculations - cheap and nasty food served in plastic packaging and squealing children. If he had been on Air NZ flight 6 with me today, he would have wept.
(PS in Auckland airport, waiting for transfer. Could be worse than Docklands but not sure)
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4 comments:
Cheap food and squealing children? That sounds like the 13 hour Hong Kong-London leg of my trip! Hope you've arrived by now...? My bags are still missing, yipe!
The first time I went to the Docklands, I found it souless and hollow too. It's like Fountain Lakes, only made up of appartments rather than McMansions. (I guess that makes them McAppartments). Rami seemed to like it though- maybe it's because he's souless and hollow!
Maybe you should change your comment settings to have the word verification turned on.
Are you there yet? Are you safe? I am lonely without phone calls and emails...
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