nine's weblog: January 2006

I'm Loving this:

In 1983 the creator of the Forevertron, Tom Every, was reborn. After 3 decades of working as an industrial wrecker, Tom began to question his role in this destructive business of demolishing well designed but commercially outdated factories and machinery.

So, he gave up his demolition business and reinvented himself as Dr. Evermor. He adapted the identity of a Victorian inventor from Eggington, Britain to suit this new life. Now, as a child the fictive Dr. Evermore had been caught in a massive thunderstorm with his father, a Presbyterian minister. Evermore's father explained the huge force of the electric storm as an act of God. From that day on Dr. Evermor has made a life's work out of creating an extraordinary electromagnetically powered spacecraft that would ultimately deliver him to the celestial heavens above.

Dr. Evermor and the Forevertron

The Forevertron is a monumental sculpture weighing aproximately 300 tons and standing 50 feet high.
It consists almost entirely of iron, brass and stainless steel, welded and bolted together. A broad variety of generators, thrusters and other electromagnetic powersources are at the core of the Forevertron. The complete structure is capped by a glass ball meant to serve as space capsule.

The Space Capsule (upper right corner) in it's iron framework.

The Great Celestial Telescope

Secundairy components of the Fantastic Forevertron include a Celestial Listening Ear and the Gravitron, to reduce the doctor's body weight before take-off. At the north end the Great Celestial Telescope points to the heavens (in case someone would want visual proof of the doctor's spacetrip), while the south end holds a spiral staircase and a fancy vip-gazebo, originally reservered for the Royal Family on take-off day.

The Royal Gazebo

The Forevertron exemplifies Dr. Evermor's distinctive and deliberate creative priority; "to blend history with art". Each part of it consists and preserves some facet of early industrial technology or machine culture, now often disappearing underneath the wrecker's ball. Components such as Edison's late 19th century bipolar dynamos appear naturally linked to the Forevertron. Logically put together, imaginatively transformed or magically conceived, this industrial artifact of artifacts honors and recalls inventors and inventions of an age we have departed.

Dr. Evermor explains:

"These forms were made in a certain time frame and we can pick up the energy of whoever the creator was, whether it be a small blade or something else. That unique form comes along again and is put in that place, so that you always have that energy. That little piece may have a very historical connection to other things and beings of a certain time frame."

"If you look at this thing, it is all curved arches and circles. It is built on the principle of odd numbers -- sets of 3, 5, 7, 9. Given the historical make-up it seems appropriate that its essentially profuse, buoyant, undulating lines recall late Victorian aesthetics, from World's Fair architectural follies to Art Nouveau."

"form before function"