Okay, as fetishes go, this is definitely a new one. Did you ever see pictures of the cat that a Dutch artists stuffed and turned into a flying drone? Yeah, that one. Well 36-year-old artist, Bart Jansen, who installs solar panels for a living (a noble profession, we might add), was devastated when his cat Orville was hit by a car in 2012. So in the spirit if Orville’s name–he seriously drew inspiration from Orville Wright of the Wright Brothers fame (think North Carolina, First in Flight)– and with the help of engineer Arjen Beltman, he made the cat into a custom quad drone. Boom! The media loved it, as would be expected. And there was also outrage from animal lovers, as could also be expected. Jansen didn’t mind. He displayed the cat at an art festival in Amsterdam.
And Jansen certainly didn’t leave it alone with that one creepy drone. The fetish has lived on. With the help of Beltman (Jansen stuffs the animals and creates the life-like look while Beltman handles the technical aspects of flight) he stuffed an Ostrich in 2013:
Then stuffed a young school boy’s rat that died of cancer:
And yes, a White Tipped shark that Jansen was able to procure for another project after it died of a bacterial infection, was transformed into a rocket:
Jansen also worked on a badger submarine. The man is definitely a gifted artist. View his work here. He recently said–tongue in cheek, presumably–that he and his partner want to “invent a machine for everything.” He’s actually kinda clever. He takes pot shots at convention whenever possible, like in 2007 when he poked fun at heated debate fueled by the media in his home country regarding burkas, the sacred garments worn by muslim women. He made one for every occasion including one from the Stars and Stripes and another that worked as a mail box.
The duo does live television appearances to pay for the projects. And he’ll need all the quan he can get for his next one. He says he and Beltman are working on a “Mancopter,” a single-person helicopter made from an animal body. But which animal is big enough to hold an actual human? “A cow could fit a person. So a cow is one of the options,” he said. “Or any other animal we can lay our hands on that fits a person, but again, it’s in a very early state of development, all still in our minds.”
