Two More Fabulous Sculptures from Melbourne...Part 4
This entry was posted on 4/13/2007 5:06 PM and is filed under Australia.
We were walking down the road and came across this very fantastic sculpture right in the median of Russell Street, a very busy street. It's made of metal and resin and feels very much like some kind of exotic apparatus. We were checking it out when a car drove by and the driver yelled out to us "What is it anyway?" We weren't quite sure. Maybe you have some ideas...
The back panels are all engraved with descriptions of this "machine" called "A History Apparatus". Here a few of the panels...
We use the Fibonnaci sequence of numbers in our currency trading so we were surprised to see that this artist had used them here too in the configuring of this machine.
We found this next sculpture in the Botanic Gardens of Melbourne right in the middle of a walking path.
Around the outside of the bell it says: POOR EYES LIMIT YOUR SIGHT ~ POOR VISION LIMITS YOUR DEEDS ~ TILLY ASTON
This statue was made in honor of Tilly Aston, a blind woman who
pioneered rights for the blind in the early 1800's, during a time when
blind people were not even allowed to vote! As you walk by the
statue, it has a motion detector and starts playing pre-recorded
pieces. One is about Tilly and what it was like to be blind in
Melbourne before her great work began (not a happy situation!), one is about the statue, and one is of
a woman narrating what it is like for a blind person to navigate
through the world, with amplified sounds in the background. She
describes how different sounds give her different clues about her
environment. Without asking that you do so, you are naturally
drawn to close your eyes, and mentally walk along with her, seeing the world
through sound.
