She (...) likes to stay at home and invent things
Von: Ana Loureiro | 29. Juli 2024, 14:13
The installation presented was specifically conceptualised and developed to be shown at the exhibition ‘Grandes Dames’, curated by Barbara Mithlinger and Gerti Hopf. The goal of this exhibition was to honour Women from Viennese society from the early 20th century who played an avant-garde role and opened the way for the active participation of Women in fields dominated by men. The exhibition was meant to be also a celebration and mark the importance of Women in society and the long road they still have to overcome to achieve equality.
The installation consists of a photo diptych and a group of 15 drawings about the technological contribution of Hollywood film star Hedy Lamarr.
- About the photo diptych:
(...) and I bought a book of birds” / “I thought the airplanes were too slow (...) so I bought a book of fish”
Photography, 50x70 cm (each)
Hedy Lamarr was a curious and restless spirit. For her, people’s brains were more interesting than their looks. Contrary to what society expected from a woman and Hollywood star in the 1940s, Lamarr spent her free time experimenting the ideas that naturally came to her mind, even during the night. However, her inventive side was unfairly discredited by her beauty.
Howard Hughes was an aircraft designer who was always on the search to create innovative and fast planes to sell to the air force. Because they shared a love for invention, Hughes provided a variety of material to Hedy put her ideas into practice during her breaks in the film sets. Her innate ability to realize solutions was beneficial to Hughes’ goal of creating the world’s fastest airplane:
“He (Howard Hughes) relied on me. I thought the airplanes were too slow. I decided that’s not right. They shouldn’t be square, the wings. So, I bought a book of fish and I bought a book of birds and used the fastest bird and connected it with the fastest fish and I drew it together and showed it to Howard Hughes. He said “you’re a genious!” .”
Hedy Lamarr, Bombshell documentary 2017
- About the drawings:
Mixed technique, 18x14 cm (each)
Challenging and difficult periods of time like war can trigger the imagination to create something that could change the course of it. Hedy Lamarr conscious and deeply concerned about the escalation of the second World War, wanted to do something besides making a great profit out of her movies.
She wanted to invent something that could be helpful for US and the allies use against the enemies and annihilate them. At that time, a lot of ships which transported people that were fleeing from war, were sunk by the German torpedoes. Outraged by this, Hedy came up with the idea of creating a secret communication code between the ship and the torpedo by operating in the same fragmented path of frequencies that no one could crack. She named it of frequency hopping. Not sure about how to implement it, Lamarr convinced George Antheil to join the process and together developed a patent. Her invention was so ahead of time that was the base for contemporary communication systems like Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and GPS. Also, the frequency hopping used by these technologies adds security to the communications preventing them of being jammed.
The work “She (...) likes to stay at home and invent things” represents as graphics the different possibilities of frequency hopping combinations and the title makes reference to a letter wrote by Antheil where he mentioned about Hedy Lamarr inventive soul:
“She lives in a child-like world, likes to stay at home and invent things...” Letter from George Antheil
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