Word: automata
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...When one machine known as "Clyde the Claw" broke down at a Ford stamping plant in Chicago, its human partners gave it a get-well party. Chauvinism being what it is, most factory workers unthinkingly refer to a robot as "he," but at one plant in Japan the clanking automata have each been given the name of a female movie star...
...first automata in actual history were more modest in concept. Archytas of Tarentum (400-350 B.C.) built a wooden dove that was reputed to have flown. In the 2nd century B.C., Hero of Alexandria wrote a book, De Automatis, that described a mechanical theater with robot figures that marched and danced in various temple ceremonies. But the king of all robotmakers was Johann Nepomuk Maelzel (1772-1838), creator of the metronome, who also constructed an automatic orchestra called the Panharmonicon, which could simulate violins, cellos, clarinets, flutes, trumpets, drums, cymbals and triangle. For this contraption, the inventor commissioned Beethoven...
...work of this venerable figure testifies, his achievement is more modest and realistic. In the 200-odd works that make up "Calder's Universe," as the show is called, there is little of the real universe, but a pervasive flavor of its metaphors: orreries, planetary clockwork, automata. The Copernican epicycles turn out to be circus rings, and the vast music of the spheres comes down to the delicious noise of appetite rubbing against humor...
...many critics have been quick to point out. But his idea is still effective, to my mind, not because it makes an extra person but because the living room filled with lively figures extends Wyke's character into the complex fantasy of his fiction. Like Wyke's books, the automata are by no means puerile, though both belong to the realm of extended childhood...
...figures is unnecessary, but the best shots in the film depend on it. A long track around the living room, accompanied by Porter's "You Do Something to Me" sums up the mood of Act Two, and these final scenes conclude with a chattering montage, as all the automata go berserk...