The Inventions of Dimitri Dutruv pt. 9

After becoming fascinated by the phenomenon of synaesthesia in the mid 1980s, Dutruv started research to develop technology to convert information from one sense into another. After experimenting with conversions between sound and taste, smell and sound, touch and vision and vision and taste, in 1987 Dutruv was able to establish a mechanism for converting smell to sound.

To demonstrate the technology, he converted several pieces of music into smell, using a series of chemical sprays to correspond to the different sounds. Those pieces included:

Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusic;

An instrumental version of The Beatles song Penny Lane;
Several tracks from Kraftwerk's Tour De France album, and;
Jimi Hendrix's seminal performance of The Star Spanged Banner, recorded live at Woodstock.

Although the technology worked successfully, the mix of chemicals induced allergic reactions in several of the participants.

Margerie Fontaine, a french test subject who volunteered to take part in the Penny Lane section of testing in Spring of 1988. In her debriefing after completion of the tests, she said, "I'm more of a Wings fan, but the smell of the Beatles makes me appreciate their work in many different ways." Photograph by by The Consortium.

 ©2013 James Mathurin

Music videos in the mountains

Cone Beat were a 1980's Irish band, a politically-oriented 4-piece, led by front man Mich Faighlty, ("nicknamed Moto"). On 15th April 1982, the band were travelling to film a video for their song, Ascension Day, when the private aeroplane they had rented was forced to touch down for an emergency landing in a remote expanse of snow in Poland. Although the video shoot was supposed to be filmed at Lublin Główny train station in the city of Lublin, Poland, Dave Moreign, their video director, decided to film it in the snowy hills where they had landed.

"The song was, well, OK," Moreign said in 1998, in an interview with Sight and Sound magazine, "And Moto's being a diva like always, so I says to the fellas, 'is there anyone here who wants to drag this bollocks out for another 3 days, or shall we just get it done while they're fixing the feckin' plane? An the vote was 3 to 1, so, yeah, we ended up making a bit of music history, if you want to call it that.'

Cone Beat fans meeting at the Snow Muzyka Skifarm, a Ski Resort set up by a local entrepreneur in order to capitalise on the annual pilgrimage of fans to the spot where the Ascension Day video was filmed. On 15th April every year, fans meet in order to re-enact the video. Since the addition of the chair-lift in 2000, some fans have used it to also re-enact the emergency landing of the plain, carrying papier-maché replicas of the entire plane, or pieces of the fuselage and wings. Photograph by KT Bell. 

 ©2013 James Mathurin 

The world’s most excessive instruction manual

The world’s most excessive instruction manual is produced by Better Beverage Industries, of Houston, Texas. The manual accompanies their novelty Easter coffee mug, with scenes of the crucifixion around the outside, and the interior of the mug displaying a scene of Christ rising from his tomb, and has been packaged with the cup since 2006.

The manual runs for 95 pages, with detailed diagrams of the correct method of pouring in both hot and cold beverages (“It is not advisable to have a small child hold the cup above their heads while you pour boiling water into it.”), the correct way of holding the mug (“firmly, by the handle; do not raise arm higher than at a right angle to the body; do not consume while lying down; rest mug on a level surface, such as a table, when not in use.”), and the correct way of storing it (“If storing on a shelf, ensure the cup is fully on the shelf, and as little as possible is over the edge. If hanging from a hook, make sure that the hook is attached to something.”). 

The manual is multilingual, and has translations in French, German, Spanish, Italian, Klingon, Dutch, Portuguese, Afrikaans, Swedish, Zulu, Hieroglyphics, Norwegian, and (inspired by the Mel Gibson film, The Passion of the Christ) Ancient Latin.

An illustrative photograph from the manual, detailing on of 6 different examples of "cup racks, which may act as an alternative to shelves." The manual goes on to explain 7 differences between the methods of storage utilised with shelves and racks. Photograph by .Larry Page.

 ©2013 James Mathurin

The most pointless speech

The most pointless speech ever given was an address to the board of GlamSinClean inc. by one of their Regional Directors, Gerald Hompknee, in 1991. In his presentation of annual figures, he started reading from a piece of homework by his 6 year-old son Jimmy, who had put it in his father’s briefcase for him to read. Mister Hompknee later admitted, “When I started reading from Jimmy’s ‘Why I’m not scared to sit on the toilet any more’ essay, I thought I was in real trouble at first, but I managed to turn it into a metaphor for management strategies, and it was actually very well received. In fact, I’ve had Jimmy and his little sister Elaine contribute to every speech I’ve done since.”

Hompknee, appearing at a University of Exeter conference on "Serendipity and Chaos Theory in Public Speaking" in 1999, . Photograph by University of Exeter.

 ©2013 James Mathurin 

The most over-priced computer repair

The most over-priced computer repair was carried out on the 11^th November 2004, when Barry Quigley, a computer repairman from Wellington, New Zealand, charged $437.68 for removing a piece of Ham and Pineapple pizza from the CD-drive of Marty Halland’s PC.

“I feel sorry for him,” said Quigley at the time, ”but hopefully this will make him remember which appliance does what job. A month ago he asked me to defragment his dishwasher, and I had to charge him $25 for the call-out charge.”

Quigley took several photographs of the opened computer, explaining later that,

"I mean, come on! After pizza in the CD tray, I had no idea what else he had done to it, and I wasn't about to leave, I don't know, a goldfish on the motherboard, and have him say I put it there or something later.'"

Photograph by _rockinfree.

 ©2013 James Mathurin 

The most drawn-out day of Association Football

The most drawn-out day of Association Football was in Poland, on Saturday 30^th November 1946. Due to the effects of war-time rubber rationing, only 5 balls were available for the whole of the national league, comprised of 19 teams. To cope with this, a one-off ruling was made that every time the ball went out of play at one match a ball-boy was chauffeured, with the ball, to the nearest stadium, so that that game would continue. After kicking off at 8am, the final whistle of the last game was sounded at 10:53 that night. The shortest game of the day had lasted 5 hours and 23 minutes, and one game had had a 42 minute half-time break, waiting for the next ball.

Karol Casimir, captain of Pelikan Radom, a club which does not exist now, but was the first club to kick off on this day of football. they actually managed 15 minutes before the ball was removed to be taken to anoher match. Speaking later, Casimir said,

"I was worried at first, as I knew other teams were waiting for our ball. One of my teammates, I won't name them, asked if we should kick the ball out deliberately, in order to allow other teams to start, but I told him that was not in the spirit of Pelikan, or the spirit of the game."

Photograph by Von Aisaider.

 ©2013 James Mathurin 

The shortest running television series

The shortest running television series ever was ‘My Boss Is A Wheelbarrow’, an American sitcom which was cancelled 8 minutes into its pilot episode. Buddy Marvin, a network executive said, 

“We’ve put some real bilge out over the years, but this was just really bad.”

The specially-modified wheelbarrow that was used to play the charcter of "Robson McGonnagle", the titular boss of the show. It had had attatchments fitted that allowed it to be moved by a stagehand, and bounce. Photograph by Rocpoc.

 ©2013 James Mathurin