Escape Vehicle No.6 versus The Space Chair Project
November 18th, 2009In 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
November 20th, 2009 at 8:38 am
http://blog.flickr.net/en/2008/07/28/pentax-k10d-in-space/
Someone did that before. Just not that professional.
November 21st, 2009 at 4:23 pm
[...] Ihr habt gefragt: Hier ist das Making-Of-Video zum Weltraumsessel-Vid von neulich. ( via todayandtomorrow) [...]
November 21st, 2009 at 8:36 pm
[...] 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… [...]
December 4th, 2009 at 12:01 am
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.”
December 13th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
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?
April 13th, 2010 at 12:43 am
In the 1960s the US Air Force made their own “escape vehicle 6″ but a pilot in a space suit and parachute went for the ride! And he lived. So, while Simon Faithfull launched the unmanned chair first, he was beat out with a _manned_ one decades earlier. Go to Youtube and look up “joe kittinger” to see the real original. Also, quite a few amateurs sent up balloon cams to 100,000 feet and put their near-space videos on Youtube.
June 28th, 2010 at 10:34 am
[...] ballonnetje oplaten. Zuiver powesie is dat. Ja ‘t is al eens eerder en beter gedaan, en letterlijk gepikt door reclamejongens. Maar dat gewone jongens met gewone middelen ballonnetjes tot in de ruimte [...]