THE SOFT MACHINE
Hommàge a Sthephen Hawking
The rain inside a car made for going to the desert is not only a reference toSalvador Dali's 1938 'Rainy Taxi' but a symbol of the new way of living the time while moving through the tumultuous times of the global warming. In the desert, the rain is not a nuisance but pure happiness, refreshing the landscape and making it bloom. As Stephen Hawking was writing, 'intelligence is the ability to adapt to change'. Hawking's intuitive illustration of Einstein's Theory of Relativity, that connects time space and movement,is the example of the two ping-pong players in a speedy train. Here they are, in pace with time, now aboard an electric, self-guiding car.
“The idea of 10 dimensions might sound exciting, but they would cause real problems if you forget where you parked your car.” ( Stephen Hawking)
Soft Machine
by Matteo Guarnaccia
A herd of Cadillacs by Ant Farm, after gorging themselves on hydrocarbons, sensing impending disaster, leave the Texan highways and try to burrow under the sand, getting stuck with their long derrieres sticking up in the air to digest the American Dream.
Here as if amidst the ruins of Babylon lurch balls of tumbleweed in search of new spaces to seed, driven by the wind like tangles of anchorites’ hair. William Burroughs, after carefully taking aim, fires at Dalí’s clocks which deflate, sagging on the branches of trees, stretching and fragmenting time. The mind of Stephen Hawking hurls multidimensional balls on the ping pong table, struck or missed by the rackets of players across the course of various lives.
Streets become canals in the torrential rain and draught dries up canals transforming them into streets. The gardeners of the quotidian have learned to get around on undepilated narrative vehicles, artfully feralized like English gardens, concocted with the cut-up technique, untroubledly troubling the alchemical dream of the restless remnant, which advances “plus belle qu’une poubelle” as Soft Machine sing. Processions of hedgehogs, frogs, cats and humans with their head in the clouds parade confidently down the road: they’re not afraid of getting run over, at worst they will be pummeled with pillows or swallowed up by the soft machine.
In the meantime the moss – which continues to refuse to gather on stones that roll – colonizes the damp insides of the rubbery structure that moves on spheres like a Bic brandished by William Burroughs on forged medical prescriptions.
Even if you exit at the next rest area, the trip goes on. The metamorphosis of the organic deambulator is unrelenting, the ball soars in expectation of the next whack of the paddle. Time flows, fast as lightning, slow as an anesthetized sloth.
Italo Rota with
Francesca Grassi and Stefan Davidovici
Realizzazione Modello: Props & Culture
Stampa 3D: Fx Model














