The Machine-Animals of Nantes

"QUANTUM SHOT" #346
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French city of Nantes recently became host to extremely strange and fascinating sculptural display: "Les Machines de l'Ile Nantes", designed by François Delarozière and Pierre Orefice. Claude Joannis has a few photographs that'll give you some idea about how extraordinary cool this exhibition is (the first on my list of museums to visit, if possible!)
(all images by permission of respective owners, click to enlarge)

The Mechanical Manta-Ray, The Squid, the Deep Sea Monster, all seem to come to life straight from Jules Verne' science adventure books:

Note the girl inside the monster's maw - every "animal machine" is a moving vehicle as well:

Constructed on the site of the former city dockyards, these steel and wood animal machines consist of the innumerable moving parts, hydraulics, gear wheels - all skillfully combined to make up various obscure sea creatures, a huge elephant, birds and prehistoric monsters... here is a mysterious crane nest:

The Squid seems genuinely surprised to end up on display in the 21st century:

Le Grand Elephant

Most impressive creation on display is the 11-meter high "mechanical" elephant, weighing more than 40 tons:

(images credit: Claude Joannis)

(image credit: Stefan)

The Night in the Museum

The genuine look and feel of the creepy museum installation comes to life when the dark descends:

(images credit: Claude Joannis)

Sultan's of India Remarkable Journey

Some of the artists responsible for this display are also the creators of the similarly bizarre theatrical show "The Sultan's Elephant", which took place in London in 2005 and then traveled across the country.

First the mysterious time capsule/spaceship arrives:

The Giant Sultan's Elephant appears, spraying the screaming crowds with water:

Also part of the show, the adjacent cars were routinely SEWN together with a giant needle (!)

(images credit: Nikki Tysoe)

Mechanical Elephants FTW

There was a series of concepts in Modern Mechanics magazine with the similarly weird "walking" modes of transportation - for fun, and for the military:

in 1933 the horse of steel runs across fields:

and later in 1962: Army crossing the mountain terrain on mechanical elephants:

(images credit: Modern Mechanix)

Something about giant walking machines... Even the Emperor supplied his Stormtroopers with AT-ATs. Such machines are definitely in our future. It's only a matter of time, till we'll be mounting a mechanical steed to go riding into the sunset to pick up groceries.

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