Inside Student BlogsNantes, Backward and ForwardNantes, Spring 2012
Two of our trips with IES so far have been to the Museum of Nantes, and then to the Machines de l’Ile. I’ll explain the second one in a little bit. The museum is actually housed in the château, whose interior is no longer kept in period style. There, we saw plenty of artifacts dealing with Nantes as a commercial center, with so much water that it was once called “The Venice of the West.” But, many of those rivers have been filled or consolidated so that it has a lot less water than before. Sadly, many of the ships going through Nantes were taking part in the slave trade between Africa and the America’s. In fact, I think Nantes may have been the most active city in the business.
Les Machines de l’Ile (The Machines of the Island) is one of the most creative projects I’ve ever seen. It is a workshop that unifies imagination, wood, and metal to create a kind of steam-punk wonderland of mechanical creatures and (increasingly) plants. The trademark machine is the giant elephant, which was the first work to be completed if I understand correctly.
The tree is referenced a couple times in the photos, because the first two of it are merely the prototype of what is going to be a massive tree, probably quite a bit bigger than a lot of real trees in Nantes. The final picture shows the view from one of the “branches” in which you can walk.
-
- This is one of the only pieces of proof we have that the ships going through Nantes were used for slave transport, because it details exactly how the human cargo was stored.
-
- Light streaming in through the window of the château, which houses the museum.
-
- I believe this was the original top of the tower on the LU factory, the famous biscuit maker of Nantes.
-
- Here is the most well known of the machines!
-
- The elephant’s trunk is incredible.
-
- Another view from higher up.
-
- Charlene, another IES student looking at a prototype of the huge tree they are constructing.
-
- A close up of the model.
-
- The heron is beautiful, and incredible to see in action when it was moved around, and had its wings flapped.
-
- The intricate wing of the heron.
-
- They also had sea creatures of many different sizes.
-
- Here is the squid!
-
- You can see the wooden pieces that make up the moving squid tentacle.
-
- This was another very cool marine creature.
-
- Here, volunteers could sit in this boat to be buffeted by the spray and wind, and rocked around by the “sea.”
-
- A bug with its designs in the background.
-
- Another view of the bug on its track.
-
- A fully automatic Venus flytrap…oh wait.
-
- Where the machines become more than designs.
-
- Here, you can see what the tree is beginning to look like to scale.
You May also like:
