Justin DolskeWow! Beautiful giant Nixie tubes! 🥰
Fascinating video showing the behind-the-scenes engineering and production for the new "Umashimenkana" art installation by Alfredo Jaar.
YouTube
(Dalibor Farný also makes beautiful Nixie tube clocks.) https://www.daliborfarny.com/
The video explains that "Umashimenkana" is inspired by the poem of the same name (aka We Shall Bring Forth New Life, aka Let Us Be Midwives) by Japanese poet Sadako Kurihara, which tells of the birth of a child amongst the horrors of the Hiroshima bombing.
(Poem follows, from https://web.archive.org/web/20070721233351/http://www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp/peacesite/English/Stage1/1-2/1-2-15E.html)
We Shall Bring Forth New Life
It was night in the basement of a broken building.
Victims of the atomic bomb
Crowded into the candleless darkness,
Filling the room to overflowing -
The smell of fresh blood, the stench of death,
The stuffiness of human sweat, the writhing moans -
When, out of the darkness, came a wondrous voice.
"Oh! The baby's coming!" it said.
In the basement turned to living hell
A young woman had gone into labor!
(continued)
Then came another voice: "I am a midwife.
I can help her with the baby."
It was a woman who had been moaning in pain only moments before.
And so, a new life was born
In the darkness of that living hell.
And so, the midwife died before the dawn,
Still soaked in the blood of her own wounds.
We shall give forth new life!
We shall bring forth new life!
Even to our death.
I can help her with the baby."
It was a woman who had been moaning in pain only moments before.
And so, a new life was born
In the darkness of that living hell.
And so, the midwife died before the dawn,
Still soaked in the blood of her own wounds.
We shall give forth new life!
We shall bring forth new life!
Even to our death.