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New international project: Our next project deals with Nikola Tesla!
Who's Tesla? Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) is regarded as one of the most important physicists and inventors in history. He is well known for his contributions to electricity and magnetism. His patents and theoretical work form the basis of modern alternating current electric power (AC) systems, radio and wireless technologies. With his inventions he helped usher in the Second Industrial Revolution. Tesla is widely known for his rivalry with the inventor Thomas Alva Edison, who advocated direct current for electricity, while Tesla advocated AC system that prevailed, and with Marconi over the invention of radio transmission. He was also well-know personality of his time, close friend with many artists, including Mark Twain and Sarah Bernhardt. Nikola Tesla is certainly the greatest person ever born in our parts - he was born in Smiljan, near Gospiæ, in central Croatia, and he spent most of his life in New York City. By nationality he was a Serbian, a son of an orthodox priest. He was a famous inventor, physicist and engineer to whom we have to thank for the electricity we use today: alternating current and the three-phase power distribution system, induction motor, wireless communication and remote control, radio and other things. He also conducted the first experiments with high voltage and high frequencies, x-rays, cosmic rays, radar, robotics. His alternating current system was used on the first power plant built on Niagara Falls in 1888, and that was his childhood dream. One of his most controversial ideas was wireless transfer of electricity, and he spent many years researching it on the Long Island. However, it was never developed, perhaps because the industry could not find the way to charge users for the energy in the air. He was also an interesting personality, eccentric but humanist and visionary, and his persona gave rise to many controversies, even conspiracies. Never putting much focus on his finances, Tesla died impoverished and forgotten at the age of 86. After his death in 1947 the United States Supreme Court credited him as being the inventor of the radio. Many contemporary admirers of Tesla have deemed him the man who invented the twentieth century. The scientific compound derived SI unit measuring magnetic flux density or magnetic induction, the tesla (T), was named in his honor.
Our project The goal of our project is to popularize Tesla - even though he has thousands of fans even today (just Google his name!). He inspired the work of so many artists, including Mark Twain, Jim Jarmusch's "Coffee and Cigarettes", Paul Auster's book "Moon Palace", neon installations by Keith Sonnier, symbolist collages by Paul Laffoley, Laurie Anderson's and David Bowie's music, films such as "Superman", "Frankestein", "Star Wars", computer game "Red Alert", the most recent one - film "The Prestige" by Christopher Nolan, and many, many more. By referring to those and other different works of art inspired by Tesla we want to focus to his inspiring potential, because he was a creative generator equally to artists and scientists.
photo: Mare Milin The basic model of work on the project will be similar to our previous award-winning project "Croatian Tales", with international collaborators that collaborate through the Internet. The project consists of three complementary parts:
... that will make a new whole - the documentary-experimental interactive story about Nikola Tesla. Each of the 3 segments deals with one of the aspects of the story, so te Web pages are not clasic site, but a supplement to the film and the generator of the film script etc.
The Website The working title of the Web page is "Tesla_Visionary_Thoughts". and the URL of it is www.twentythousandcycles.net (at this moment there is a short trailer). The content will be organized an imaginative warehouse of ideas, links and facts that can, when related to one of the "stories" about Tesla, open innumerous possibilities of interpretation, and with the real links to other pages and sites give the possibility of multiple and open "endings". Such a site will try to push the visitor to further exploration and re-create the specific association chain that occurs in scientific thinking and any other form of creation. The illustrator, animator and designer of the pages is Sabina Hahn from New York, and Ursula Malecki, designer and programmer from Mexico.
The film A combination of documentary and animated film, the film will include 16 stories inspired by Tesla and his life in New York City, where he lived from 1884 to 1943, and also Colorado Springs, Budapest and other places. By showing the locations where he lived and worked, the film will be a sort of time and space adventure with imaginary host characters that will, by exploring the urban and social development of the city in Tesla's lifetime, find also the places that will, through a sort of associative game, collective memory and impulse to search for the new, link the city with Nikola Tesla, by recovering his inventions, thoughts and social activities that directly influenced the formation of the world we know today.
still from the film "Mechanical Figures" The filming on locations in New York City started in January 2006, and continues on other locations: Croatia, Budapest, Belgrade, London, Colorado Springs, New Zealand... (The news about the project development and filming are available here...)
The performance In exploring the way the ideas are being born in a mind of a scientist, by visualizing the associative chain started by various impulses, by investigating the possibilities of media convergence, by mixing the fiction and reality, we will try to convert the "wizardry" of Nikola Tesla to visually attractive, simulative and inspiring series of meta-stories. This part of the project will include re-interpretation and putting the materials made for the Web and film on a real space of the stage. We will try to evoke the atmosphere of Tesla's lab, where the time has stopped, and the space was filled with the magic of his visionary inventions. This final part of the project will also be an end to our trip through the various media. *** We started to work on "Tesla" project in summer 2004. Right now we are filming, and also editing the filmed materials, working on animation, etc. The project should be finished by mid 2007. The project is sponsored by Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia and Zagreb City Council for Culture. If you would like to join in, you are welcome! Just email to Helena (helena@bulaja.com).
To find out more about Nikola Tesla, the pages of their great documentary
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