Inspired by the figure "Olimpia" from E.T.A. Hoffmanns short story "The Sandman". Originally perceived as being human, she turns out to be a perfectly life like mechanical doll. In the story, written some 200 years ago, the technology was limited to precision mechanics and a touch of magic, for anything that could not be solved any other way. _ Science has looked into our bodies all the way down to the smallest parts and the building blocks of life. Yet, life in itself is becoming more and more miraculous for me. Not so much in a religious sense, but with major questions unanswered. The concept of the soul for instance. Are all living things supposed to have one? Is there a connection to a consciousness? _ There are theories that artificial intelligence might develop consciousness in the future. However, can an artificial being have a soul? What if it became possible some day, to sort of upload our brains content, the organic software so to speak, to a machine... where does the soul go in that case? _ In Hoffmann’s story in the end, Olimpia is described as a "soulless automaton". I designed mine like a little golden figurine like those, one finds on vintage music boxes for instance. _ In my art, I try to balance female and male in a yin yang like manner. The actual figure and the flower represent the female aspect. The male energy shows more or less in the implied presence of the music box and the metal pieces remaining, once the figure disappears. While she turns around, her physical body dissolves and reveals her inner being. This might actually be her soul. One of Clarke's laws says: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. It will be interesting to see what the future holds and what magic we may witness.
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