Artist's Catcopter Causes a Stir 360
derekmead writes "I'm not sure that Dutch artist Bart Jansen had political commentary in mind when he created the Orvillecopter — combining a stuffed cat with a quadrotor, and naming it after Orville Wright — but indeed it's art, whose meaning will lie in the eye of the beholder. And for those that say stitching up a dead animal around the guts of a helicopter and flying it around is 'sick,' what of the massive drone industry, which, more than just producing a symbol, actually is creating flying death?"
Leather belt/jacket/shoes (Score:5, Funny)
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Hear, hear. I think it's cute to use a cat because the taxidermist did a good enough job in making it, well, smile as it flies towards you. I think it's hilarious, and when my cat's time comes, I'll likely choose to immortalize her thus.
Re:Leather belt/jacket/shoes (Score:5, Insightful)
Not this one (Score:2)
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Re:Leather belt/jacket/shoes (Score:5, Interesting)
Think of the historical uses of dead animals. Battlewear skull helms. Femur clubs, jawbone clubs.Costumery to frighten the opponent in battle. Clothes, tools, fertilizer,food,games, the dead animal has been with us through war and peace throughout the ages. Let's hope that artists like Jansen or Survival Research Laboratories continue to show the world the value of recycling ANY dead animal. In the media we have Disney propaganda that involves a cartoon armadillo recently run over, yet able to talk. The Beverly Hillbillies ate grannys "road kill stew" and look how Ellie Mae and Jethro turned out! In the beautiful work of art " Un Chien Andalou" by Dali and Bunuel, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xH2PV_S4QI [youtube.com] we see manifestation of Dalis obsession with rotting asses, which appear in later paintings and sketches. Let us celebrate dead animals and teach the children the fascination and value of lifes end product.
Re:Leather belt/jacket/shoes (Score:5, Funny)
>>>So what confuses you here?
Some politician somewhere will try to outlaw the stuffing of cats. (And then go stuff dead cow flesh into his mouth while he walks-round in dead cow skin.) It is confusing why some animals are protected & their killing outlawed, while other animals get murdered in the billions.
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Re:Leather belt/jacket/shoes (Score:5, Interesting)
No, according to PETA you must not eat the animals, or use their fur, or skin, only kill them and trash the bodies making sure it is a complete waste of an animal's life and corpse.
PETA is the same group that tries to make it seem like my well-fed, mostly-indoor, spoiled-to-hell pets are enslaved. [yahoo.com] Obviously whoever came up with that concept has never belonged to a cat.
Every time I come across that particular group of terrorists (yes, they are terrorists), I make it a point to outline my wife's plan to turn our 2 cats into a pair of mittens and socks, respectively, once they pass away.
Seriously, I do that. Fuckers hate me, and the feeling is mutual.
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Re:Leather belt/jacket/shoes (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Leather belt/jacket/shoes (Score:5, Informative)
This is because they might have consumed something making them unfit for food. No one knows what medicines or pollution those stray animals consumed. I also doubt that it would be worth it cost wise. The one off butchering of such an animal would probably cost more than buying commercial meat for the starving. I know that when I have an animal butchered after hunting or when my family buys live animals and has them slaughtered and butchered the cost just for that service is often more than the cost of low quality meat at the market.
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I've had sea urchin. Trust me, I will never think of it as a pet... But damn if that wasn't the single most disgusting thing I have EVER put into my mouth. Oh my god, I still shudder.
Re:Leather belt/jacket/shoes (Score:5, Insightful)
It is confusing why some animals are protected & their killing outlawed,
It's really no more complicated than this: Cute animals are protected. They're protected because people get outraged when an animal with an attractive face is harmed, and a politician can create a law protecting them and get some votes. That's all there is too it.
Re:Leather belt/jacket/shoes (Score:4, Insightful)
Your law may differ, but AFAIK, the law in my country doesn't discriminate based on cuteness on animal. It's illegal to kill certain species because they are endangered. It's illegal to kill animals that belong to another person. It's illegal to kill any animal in painful or inhumane way, or to deliberately injure any animal without good reason.
There might be more public outrage or political posturing when it's a cute penguin that gets kicked to death, but the law doesn't distinguish between animals on that basis.
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They would also have the right to complain and try to stop me.
They would have a right to complain. They would have no right to try to stop you.
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Anyone who doesn't think this is funny as hell has no sense of humor and probably don't get invited to many parties.
BTW, here is a free cat [jokespalace.com] for the next helicopter.
Re:art? (Score:4, Informative)
If you want to comment on something from TFS, make a new comment, don't reply to the first, completely unrelated comment. It's obnoxious and it completely destroys the flow of conversation.
Re:art? (Score:4, Insightful)
You really can't grasp the meaning of that? It means they recommend participating in existing threads rather than starting new ones, not to post off-topic messages to other thread.
That's pretty sad coming from a 5 digit uid. You should know better by now.
Also keep in mind, there is no -1, Incorrect for a reason.
Re:actually... (Score:5, Informative)
O.K. then, I'll pick the ball back up and run by pointing out PRIOR ART. http://srl.org/machines/oldmachines/rabotrecent.jpg [srl.org] The folks over at Survival Research Laboratories added dead animals to machines for entertainment decades ago. http://srl.org/machines.html [srl.org] shows us some of their robotic triumphs. But before you write it off as geek driven entertainment, check out their R&D. http://www.srl.org/lab.html [srl.org] . Really deserves a story of it's own on /. as these are definitely Supergeeks deluxe with a rich history. http://www.srl.org/ [srl.org]
Re:art? (Score:5, Funny)
The only thing in the eye of the beholder is charm, death, fear, telekinesis, serious wounds, and anti-magic.
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Do you think the artist can say the same?
Yes, I think he can say the same. This was a roadkill cat. It would have just rotted away otherwise. At least the pelt is now used as "art" (their description, not mine) as opposed to just rotting meat and fur.
Re:Leather belt/jacket/shoes (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, you fail. It was both roadkill and the artists beloved pet. It was his pet cat, he had it for several years, then it got hit by a car and died, then he turned it into an RC copter. The article from TFS only mentions "roadkill" while not commenting on the pet status, though the articles it links to explicitly mention that it was his cat.
heavy (Score:3)
Looks heavy, but it does bring up a question:
Why is it that these UAVs are always naked? Why not build a very simple lightweight frame to stretch some nylon over or something? Give it some kind of a flashy skin.
Do it right and it might help flight in moving air (since the air would just pass around, instead of pushing against the components)
Re:heavy (Score:4, Informative)
Because in general you want to avoid putting on extra unneeded weight.
The airstream from the rotors itself already hits barely anything (i.e. the struts). I'd guess you could get some better airflow depending on the shape of those struts, but adding a skin between the struts wouldn't help much..in fact, it would make it easier for the wind to 'catch' it.
Toy quadcopters that you can get off-the-shelf for cheap (but usually have poor gyros and are too small to handle themselves in even a slight breeze) do typically have more of a a body, though.
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I can't decide... (Score:4, Funny)
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Lord help me, as much as I love my kitty, even I had to LOL at this.
I think it's the expression on the helicat's face more than anything else.
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I'd love to see a version with it baring its teeth. Something like this [ocregister.com].
Re:I can't decide... (Score:5, Funny)
Extermely disturbing to birds. To cats, the stuff of dreams.
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I actually brought this up at lunch today and all of my coworkers were very much in the "disturbing" camp. I was surprised since I find it rather interesting. I guess I really am that weird.
Re:I can't decide... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I can't decide... (Score:4, Funny)
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I'm vegan and I find this thing hilarious.
"disrespectful to life?" (Score:2, Funny)
You have to be kidding me.
Or was that an ironic take on the gay marriage debate? Please say yes.
Re:I can't decide... (Score:5, Insightful)
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And since when has humanity possessed any respect for life?
It's situational: civilization doesn't progress far w/o "local" respect for human life, and some disrespect for "foreign" human life is partly good at unifying the tribe.
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And since when has humanity possessed any respect for life?
I know misanthropy is hip among the cool kids, but we need to realize that humanity is a complex entity and its character not easily judged or dismissed like this. There is an entire spectrum from compassionate to cruel. If you yourself have respect for life, then it cannot be said that humanity has no respect for life.
In any case, I think there is a line that divides using a corpse to serve the living, and using a corpse to create whimsicality. If one cannot give a corpse a higher purpose, then it's best t
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And since when has humanity possessed any respect for life?
In any case, I think there is a line that divides using a corpse to serve the living, and using a corpse to create whimsicality. If one cannot give a corpse a higher purpose, then it's best to leave it alone.
So... not a Tim Burton fan, I take it?
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Burton's ever used real corpses.
Re:I can't decide... (Score:5, Funny)
If one cannot give a corpse a higher purpose, then it's best to leave it alone.
The catcopter does give the corpse a higher purpose--about 5 feet in the picture and probably much higher if taken outside.
Disrespectful to death you mean surely ? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Just because you never learned how to feel doesn't mean it's "normal" to be a sociopath.
I suppose anyone who wears leather is also a sociopath? Or eats a cow? It's a little unusual to use a skin in this manner, but hardly "sociopathic". I actually found it really funny to see a flying cat. Sure, it's dead, but it's not like he mounted the head on a bloody spike or something.
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Because every culture in history hasn't developed traditions for handling its dead, and respecting the losses of the survivors, even if the death wasn't a personal loss for yourself.
It's tradition, and tradition is always good. And if most people believe it's good, then it is.
Re:Disrespectful to death you mean surely ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Who said it's a toy? Considering the discussion it has fostered, the catcopter has certainly served a higher purpose than it would have had it just been stuck in the ground.
been around a while (Score:2)
Or does making it a zombie cyborg (cyborg zombie? what is the proper nomenclature here? ) make it somehow worse?
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Respect is subjective, I would totally dig the idea of being turned into a helicopter after I die.
I second that, especially if my estate uses my cadaver-copter to harass those I disliked in life... maybe not even the whole body, just a few choice sections...
It's a bird!
It's a plane!
It's... Oh, shit, it's a flying asshole! And it's COMING RIGHT FOR US!!!
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And how do you think having someone do that to your body after you're dead would affect other people?
My friends who knew me well would laugh their asses off that I got one last joke in, and probably take turns crashing me into things until I was too beat up to fly. 10,000 bonus points if they think to have my mouth gaping wide open so they can make me dive-bomb things and end up with an unnaturally wide broken-toothed grin after flying into a couple brick walls in downtown traffic. Extra bonus points for mounting my head on a bearing so it can spin slowly.
Random idiots would get all offended that somebody
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Disturbing :(
Doing things like shows lack of empathy, and is I believe is disrespectful to life.
Oh come on. But you don't think wrapping your feet in parts of dead animals and walking on them is disrespectful to life? It's not necessity because (depending on your local climate) you could go barefoot, or wear plastic or rubber shoes, or wooden clogs. There are some vegetarians who take the "pro-life" stance, and don't use leather etc. I give them high marks for integrity and consistency, though they are often pretty flakey otherwise.
If I'm ever roadkill, I wanna be reincarnated as a quadracopter.
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Ceiling cat is watching you first post. (Score:2)
Does it spew guns from it's mouth while giving out helpful life advice?
Re:Ceiling cat is watching you first post. (Score:5, Funny)
A flying zombie kitty? Does it spew guns from it's mouth while giving out helpful life advice?
No, but it does have a rainbow streamer and a really, really annoying theme song.
Time to update the book (Score:5, Funny)
Enough with the commentary (Score:3)
There is a clear and distinct difference between using a dead animal as a work of art (which is pushing the limit of what art really is) and using man-made tools to go after people who have expressed in both word and deed they want to kill us.
Post the article, leave out the commentary. Or would you prefer when articles are posted about government science research, commentary regarding how this only feeds the beast be included?
You don't "get" art, do you? (Score:4, Insightful)
The commentary IS the art. To leave out the commentary would be to miss the entire point.
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The commentary IS the art. To leave out the commentary would be to miss the entire point.
Um, no. The commentary in this case was the second hand blog article - which starts speaking of drones, kill lists, etc - and not the original artist's commentary as far as I know. (Though someone who speaks Dutch could confirm it.)
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Yeah. One of those things is legal. The other is not.
Re:Enough with the commentary (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean people like Tariq Aziz and his 12 year old cousin? There is no evidence that they expressed any such wish at any point. Wouldnt be surprising if their families feel that way now, though.
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There are also thousands of photos taken ever since photography was invented, all of the maiming that humankind has done to one another over the countless years.
Drones aren't anything special - but they do remove the risk to a pilot in the process, and thats good enough for me.
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Big. Fat. Pussy. That's what you Americans are. No better then the Natsi scum that broke into homes and shot kids "for sport". Americans are the new Holocaust.
How do you know "smooth wombat" is American? I though wombats were exclusive to the Australian continent? Anyway, I both agree with the commentary regarding drone attacks, as well as the humor of flying roadkill, and I am an American. So... you know...
"Most generalizations are false, including this one." -- Samuel Clemens
Respect (Score:4, Insightful)
It is not very respectful to take a dead animal and put it on a quadcopter.
Its a lot more respectful to put the thing in the dirt where you may potentially drive over it time and time again. I mean, thats how it died and I am sure it died doing what it loved.
Its freaking dead. For all I care he catapulted it into the moon. Its not like he killed it to make his quadcopter skin. People are fucking retarded.
So how many lives do drones save? (Score:3)
They're up there, occasionally letting loose a missile, sending video back to operators. Does that provide any benefit to friendlies?
Remember - all actions are viewed FROM a perspective, and WITHIN a context. Dropping the atomic bomb on Japan, from the perspective of allied troops girding for the invasion of the Japanese mainland, and viewed within the context of the greater wold war swirling about them, was a great idea. From the perspective of the Emperor, it was a terrible idea. From the perspective of the Japanese citizens about to be incinerated and crushed, it was a terrible idea.
Perspective and context. Always necessary to take into account when analyzing an action.
Re:So how many lives do drones save? (Score:4, Insightful)
From the perspective of all the Japanese citizens that survived vs would have been killed in the course of invasion or even just a sustained firebombing campaign over all of Japan's major cities. the nukes were also a good idea.
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Given the limited number of Japanese psychics in the world war II era, I think you would find a limited number of Japanese citizens who were thankful to the US for their magnanimosity.
Would you rather be vaporized instantly and feel nothing, or die a slow painful death of radiation poisoning?
I think this is one arena of thought in which it's OK to make an assumption. No clairvoyance necessary.
As if he's pointing out hypocrisy? (Score:2)
"And for those that say stitching up a dead animal around the guts of a helicopter and flying it around is 'sick'" -- yes, it is.
"...what of the massive drone industry, which, more than just producing a symbol, actually is creating flying death?" --- that's sick as well.
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Yeah. I'm not really having a problem with them creating drones especially when they're used to kill people who poison girls schools. Like they did a couple of days ago. [rawa.org] So that'd make 400 students so far at 4 different schools I believe.
Hilarious (Score:5, Funny)
Almost had to LOL just looking at the pictures. This idea is great, he should make an entire series of dead animal RC vehicles. And then have some kind of epic death match crashing them into each other.
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This idea is great, he should make an entire series of dead animal RC vehicles... then have some kind of epic death match crashing them into each other.
Not sure the term 'deathmatch' would apply... then again, that may be the most appropriate usage of the term ever.
Of all time.
102 Uses for a dead cat (Score:2)
I guess this book needs to be republished now...
http://www.amazon.com/101-Uses-Dead-Simon-Bond/dp/0517545160/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1338836951&sr=8-1 [amazon.com]
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By the way, I am a cat lover, not a hater, but I loved that book as a kid.
As such, I am as of yet undecided if this catricopter is good or bad...
Utterly contrived article (Score:2)
Did the artist himself say anything about growth in drone technology and usage? It seems to me that motherboard/vice is using the "art is in the eye of the beholder" as a broad excuse to connect the two. Well, Jackson Pollock paintings look like coleslaw to me, so maybe I too can base a polemic on our modern obsession with health foods and fad diets around that observation?
News for Nerds, stuff that matters... (Score:2)
Missed opportunity (Score:3, Funny)
I know he was going for tying in the outrage of the cat with the flying drone thing, but he missed a brilliant opportunity to use a small pig instead.
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Obligatory "What a lineup!"
What I really want to do... (Score:5, Funny)
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Sorry, it has to be asked (Score:5, Funny)
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I fucking love the Internet.
1 word (Score:2)
Dreadful!
Nonetheless I'd like to do the same to mr. Bart!
Now We Know... (Score:5, Funny)
...what happened to Schrodinger's cat
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Oh, but it's such a *cute* *cat* ! (Score:2)
-- Gramma Z
try another article for some perspective (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2154283/Cats-away-Artist-turns-dead-pet-flying-helicopter-killed-car.html?ITO=1490 [dailymail.co.uk]
this isn't some mad scientist-type murdering strays to build controversial art. this is an artist who taxidermied his pet after it was hit and killed by a car. the cat was already named 'orville' and the artist thought it befitting to send his pet to play with the birds it so loved in life. the article posted with the /. story tells none of the real info and offers only inflammatory and barely-relevant commentary.
Gravity Cat Not Amused! (Score:2)
Can I just say? (Score:3)
Dinner, air delivered; sure beats Happy Meal toys! (Score:2)
Wow, your Kentucky Fried Cat gets flown to you, and you get to keep the delivery vehicle as a toy! Now that is innovation!
Dear god (Score:2)
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Clearly they're planning on adding a .22 to the cat's mouth at some point.
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Chuck Testa does not taxidermize pets!
Re:It aint RIGHT! (Score:5, Insightful)
Should have used a live cat instead, that would be much more tasteful.
Personally I don't see any difference between this and what Damian Hurst produces (It's not for everyone I suppose), except that this flies, which is cool :-)
no, not funny at all, in any manner (Score:5, Funny)
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Are they though? I mean, sure, they want people to treat animals well (by PETA standards) while they're alive, and they definitely don't like it when people turn live animals into dead animals, but doing weird stuff with an animal carcass that was already dead when the guy got it? I'm not sure it fits in with their general focus...
ADDENDUM: Okay, after typing that, I had the idea to google for "peta position on eating roadkill". Yes, they actually have one [peta.org]. I'm thinking