Escape Vehicle No.6 versus The Space Chair Project

November 18th, 2009

In 2004, Simon Faithfull was commissioned to do a live event by The Arts Catalyst for its Artists Airshow. He decided to launch a weather balloon with a chair attached to it. The audience could follow the live video feed on a large screen. A typical art project.
In 2009, the advertising agency Grey London did The Space Chair Project for their client Toshiba. They also launched a chair with a weather balloon, except that they used HD cameras to create the highest HD TV ad in the world. But somehow they don’t mention Simon Faithfull anywhere …

Update: According to this article, Simon was part of the team who did the ad.

Escape Vehicle No 6 by Simon Faithfull (2004)

The Space Chair Project

The Making of Space Chair

found via @golan

5 Responses to “Escape Vehicle No.6 versus The Space Chair Project”

  1. Georg Says:

    http://blog.flickr.net/en/2008/07/28/pentax-k10d-in-space/

    Someone did that before. Just not that professional.

  2. Weltraumsessel: So wirds gemacht « 11k2 Says:

    [...] Ihr habt gefragt: Hier ist das Making-Of-Video zum Weltraumsessel-Vid von neulich. ( via todayandtomorrow) [...]

  3. 飛空椅:Simon Faithfull 2004的作品 Says:

    [...] 由today and tomorrow轉貼 2004年,Simon Faithfull製作了一個錄像藝術,將一個椅子,用氣球升空,並用攝影機將過程錄影下來… 而最近,Toshiba也用相同的手法,為他們的HD電視做了一個廣告,在讚嘆技術進步的同時,也覺得至少廣告商應該要提及前人的功勞吧… [...]

  4. greenface Says:

    Simon Faithfull: “I was not “absolutely part of the team” as Matt McDowell has recently suggested – the first time I saw the Toshiba film myself was when people started sending me the YouTube link. I did help with the underlying themes and ideas behind the advert in that I had one meeting with Grey within which we discussed the possibility of re-staging my artwork ‘Escape Vehicle no.6′ during my recent exhibition at the British Film Institute. The idea was that this would be a large, live public event in the centre of London and later there would also be an edited version for TV functioning as an artwork/advert. This subsequently didn’t work out and I can’t really say any more for legal reasons.”

  5. James McArdle Says:

    It is quite extraordinary that artists so often are uncredited with R&D that leads to later major money-making business from which they gain nothing – think for example Tim McMillan’s ‘Timeslice’ technology developed while he was a sculpture student at art school being appropriated in ‘bullet-time’ imagery in the Matrix. How many others? How many where the artist-originator is the beneficiary?

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