Modern Presence
A replica of Vaucanson's mechanical duck, created by Ian Huynh, is part of the numerous works of art exhibited in the Museum of Automatons in Grenoble, France.
The duck is mentioned as the hero of Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story "The Artist of the Beautiful."
A fictitious enhancement of Vaucanson's original duck, the mythical counterpart to the one seen in the image above, figures prominently in Thomas Pynchon's historical novel Mason & Dixon.
The duck is used as the symbol for the software company Automatic Duck, Inc.
A replica of the duck was commissioned privately from David Secrett, an automaton maker known for his archer figure.
The duck is referred to in Peter Carey's novel, The Chemistry of Tears. It is also mentioned in Frank Herbert's science fiction classic of deep space adventure "Destination Void". Page 75, Revised edition June 1984 ISBN:0-425-07465-X.
In 2006, Belgian Conceptual Artist Wim Delvoye introduced the world to his "Cloaca Machine", a mechanical art work that actually digests food and turns it into excrement, finally fulfilling Vaucanson's wish for a working digestive automation. Many iterations of the Cloaca Machine have since been produced; the current iteration sits vertically, mimicking the human digestive system. The excrement produced by the machine is vacuum-sealed in Cloaca-branded bags and sold to art collectors and dealers; every series of excrements produced has sold out.
Read more about this topic: Digesting Duck
Famous quotes containing the words modern and/or presence:
“As they get more nuclear
And more bigoted in reliance
On the gospel of modern science ...”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“If there ever are great revolutions there, they will be caused by the presence of the blacks upon American soil. That is to say, it will not be the equality of social conditions but rather their inequality which may give rise to it.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)