Monday, 25 June, Frustration, goats, artists, robots, and Celadon

Written 31 July 2018

Monday morning, I convinced David to roll out relatively early, on the grounds that we were going to the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie at La Villette, which is huge and should be regarded as a full-day project. We accordingly walked to Oberkampf, caught the #9 metro to Gare de l'Est, and changed to the #7, which took us all the way out to Porte de la Villette, in the northeast corner of Paris. After emerging from the station, we walked the length of this esplanade up to the entrance, only to be turned away. "We're closed on Mondays." I was sure I'd checked in advance, but no, it's a city museum, so it's always closed on Monday. Rats.

At least on the way I got this photo of one of the two goats (mother and daughter) who are employed full time to manage the lawns around the buildings. They were in the field just to the right of the esplanade.

So at this point, we reconsidered our options and decided to head back downtown to the Pasteur exhibition at the Grand Palais. At the other end of that long metro ride, we settled for lunch at a Brasserie right behind the venue called, appropriately enough "Le Grand Palais. It was right across from the door flanked by huge banners advertising Pasteur.

Unfortunately, all the food we ate on this occasion, as well as a later occasion when we came back, was red. That's because we sat under its bright red awning, which filtered the sunlight accordingly. Keep in mind, therefore, that David's Norwegian salad was not really that color. It was green lettuce topped with green beans, toasts with fromage blanc and nice pink salmon, and little pink shrimp.

Likewise, my Greek salad consisted entirely of normally colored ingredients: lettuce grilled eggplant and peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, and feta. The olives were black but were the ordinary kind canned in water rather than anything very Greek. I was nearer the edge of the awning, so only the plate really looks pink.

The color is particularly unfortunate in the image of the lovely crême brulée we shared. The flavor of the week was pistachio, so I deliberately took a bit before I took the photo, so as to show off the lovely green color of the crème below the crust, but as you can see, it just looks red.

Lunch out of the way, we crossed the street to the Pasteur exhibition, only to be turned away there as well! But, I protested, I know I checked and verified that the Grand Palais is open on Mondays! Ah, yes, they said, it is, but to get there you have to go around the building and in the front door. We're housed in the Grand Palais, but we're the Palais de la Decouverte, a separate museum altogether. As a branch of La Cité de la Science et de l'Industrie, we're closed on Mondays. Drat!

So, regrouping again, we walked around the building and visited the exhibition "Artists and Robots." It had been on my list of things to see if we ran out of other stuff, but since we were right there, we gave it a try.

I wasn't sure, from the publicity posters I'd seen just what to expect, but it turned out to be on the production of by means of robots. It started from the earliest such cases and proceeded through increasingly modern applications. One of the first installations we came to was this table bearing a stuffed fox, a skull, and a stuffed raven. Three cameras with drawing arms were focused on it and were busily sketching the scene. The one shown here at thr right was working on a view of the whole scene, whereas another was focused more narrowly on the fox's head.

The results ranged from merely suggestive of the shapes to quite accurate portrayals. A nearby wall display recent attempts, and you could buy some of the nicer ones in the gift shop. I was tempted, but they were in the 300-euro range, so I resisted.

Nearby, three little robot cars, each equipped with a different color of felt-tip pen, which it could raise or lower into contact with the surface, were buzzing around on a table, painting an abstract. As far as I could tell from the info on the label, each was looking for areas devoid of its color, so as to add some. None of them seemed to be drawing anything, though, because the trial had been running for a while, and the table was pretty well covered.

On a wall next to the table, this "Senseless Drawing Bot" (that's what the label called it) was busy emulating urban graffiti, according to an algorithm that produced different patterns every time. The folks in the back are admiring earlier drawings of the fox and raven.

Elsewhere on long walls, they had posted these strips of computer paper on which, in 1986, a computer (in its role as robot) had drawn long series of images consisting of increasing densities of superimposed quadrilaterals. The title could be translated either "Structure of quadrilaterals" or "Structure from quadrilaterals."

In a darkened side room, lines of digits raced across the floor (and anyone standing under the projectors) at different rates. I never found a label explaining the work.

On this computer screen, line segments appeared (left), drifting slowly around the surface, joining up becoming progressively more organized (right), . . .

. . . they abruptly drifted into this configuration outlining a cube. It took a while, and I didn't watch long enough to see whether they always formed the same shape. Hypnotic.

Another, larger screen displayed this array of pastel-colored stylized dandelion clocks (the piece was entitled "Dandelions"). Elsewhere in the room was a little cylindrical pedestal sort of like a drinking fountain, with a small post on top and the instructions "blow."

When someone blew on it, the little parachuted seeds flew away on all directions, a few at a time if you blew gently, faster and in greater numbers if you blew hard.

When all the stem were bare, as at the right here, they disappeared and were replaced by a new and different set of fresh clocks. Charming!

One artist had programmed his computers to generate drawings of plant life like something out of Alice in

Wonderland.

Another had generated a program that produced realistic-looking landscapes, like this narrow river gorge. The were very convincing!

Yet another had set his computer to designing increasingly fanciful architectural columns, and then actually producing them in 3D by cutting out many, many layers of cardboard that could be stacked up to form the shapes. We walked through a whole room full of them, 10 feet tall and amazingly detailed and ornate. That's a close-up of a portion of one of them at the right.

It was a little dizzying to walk through the room shown here, where the walls and floor were covered with slowly writhing geometric swirls.

A fun piece, though, was this computer screen on which hundreds of simulated flies scurried about, forming themselves into the shape of whatever was placed before them. You can easily see the shapes of our Tilley hats, of my skirt, and of my hands holding the camera to take the photo. A kid stuck his hand into the shot, and the flies dutifully copied its shape as well.

Written 1 August 2018

The audio animatronics were strange. On a video screen, what appeared to be a real woman sometimes talked to passers by while at other times a mohawk-haired robot of her gesticulated and addressed them as well. I didn't listen long enough to figure out whether she was saying anything very specific about the people in front of her or was just talking in general.

The much more realistic Asian gentleman shown at the right also occasionally spoke, but in a language I didn't know. And, no, the photo isn't out of focus around the head; it actually looked like that. His face was split down the center and spread apart, revealing a second, identical face inside. I'm not sure why. The eyes in the two faces moved independently of one another.

If you Google "robot chinois grand palais," you'll find lots of links (which I have not yet taken time to follow) and better photos that may offer fuller explanations.

The little robot on the video screen shown here at the left was really pretty creepy. He seemed to be talking about trash, but I couldn't understand him very well and was not really motivated to keep watching.

On the other hand, I found this graphic directing visitors to the restrooms absolutely charming and highly exhibition-specific. The curators clearly devoted lots of thought to detail.

Our very favorite piece in the whole exhibition, though, the one I would have in my house in a millisecond (if I could afford it, and if I had a space in which to hang it) was this wonderful hexagon of triangles made of straight lengths of copper-colored tubing.

It hung high above us from the rotunda in a round stone staircase and was in constant, slow motion. For scale, note the people pointing to it from the landing a floor above us. As we watched, it undulated, rotated, rose, and fell.

At the right is the somewhat closer view of it we got from the upper landing.

Using telephoto, I was finally able to spot the strands of monofilament from which it hung. Each tube was suspended independently of all the others, by a filament at each of its ends, and each monofilament hung from its own tiny reel. The reels were all controlled by computer software, so they could independently lift or lower each end of of each tube. They could apparently also move around on the ceiling.

While we watched, the hexagon slowly broke apart; all the tubes separated from each other and spread out across the rotunda.

They then slowly coalesced again into groups of triangles (as in the left-hand photo).

Dinner Monday night was at Le Céladon, where we ate once some years ago with Niece Julia (I think, though it could have been CJ). It's located in the Hôtel Westminster, so as we emerged from the metro we had this nice view of the old Opera Garnier and as soon as we bore right onto Rue de la Paix, we could sight down the street to the column in the Place Vendôme (that's Napoleon on top, dressed in a toga).

After an amouse-bouch of marinated herring with a disk of sweet jelly (I ate David's herring), our tasting menu began with ruffled cromesquis of poultry with pesto and arugula. In my prior experience, cromesquis were always croquettes with liquid centers, but these were solid. Each was accompanied by a roasted cherry tomato.

Next, I chose sardines marinated with ponzu, served with deep purple potatoes and strips of slow-roasted tomatoes. Each sardine was beheaded and gutted, then opened out flat, the backbone removed, and the body rolled, from the head end, into a cylinder with the tail on top. Very picturesque, and tasty, too.

I can't imagine that David had marinated sardines, too, but I seem to have no record of his eating anything else at the same time.

For the main course, David had cod in an herb crust with "exotic broth" and fresh vegetables.

I chose lamb in an herbes de Provence crust with tiny potatoes, green and yellow zucchini slices, and a purée of sweet red peppers.

Here we are at our table during the main course. On the butter dish, you can see the butter knife, which has a thick horn handle with a flat end, so that it can stand upright. We saw knives like it several places, so a salesman must have made the rounds recently. Note also the table decor, consisting of three small purple eggplants under a glass bell jar. Each table had a different assortment of vegetables. A couple at a neighboring table lifted the bell jar off to see whether the veggies were real (they were) only to have the tidy heap fall apart. They had to get help from the waiter to reconstruct it and get the bell jar back on!

After the main course came a slightly embarrassing interlude. As the waiter cleared our plates, David remarked sadly, "no cheese," as we hadn't seen any mention of a cheese course on the menu. The waiter repeated "no cheese" in a tone that made me think he'd taken it the wrong way. As soon as he left, I said softly to David (I don't think the waiter could hear me), "I think maybe you just turned down cheese." At that point, the waiter came bustling back over and said, "But, of course, if you want cheese . . . Certainly, we can organize cheese!" and hurried away again

A long pause ensued while, I suspect, they sent out for cheese. Eventually, these handsome and copious cheese plates appeared, piled with Camembert, Cantal, and Reblochon. They were delicious, but we couldn't finish it all.

For dessert, David had "peach Melba," though definitely of a nonstandard variety. Rather than a poached peach half topped with vanilla ice cream and raspberry sauce, he got two slices of cake sandwiched with raspberries and whipped cream and topped with more whipped cream and alternating slices of white and yellow peach. Also little spheres of peach cut with a small melon baller and vanilla ice cream on the side. A few streaks of raspberry sauce. As they always do when they serve ice cream on the side, they put it on top of a pile of crumbs, intended to insulate the ice cream from the warmer plate. I wish they wouldn't do that; I'd rather have my ice cream a little melted on the bottom than laced with crumbs, which spoil the texture.

My dessert was "blanc-manger," or almond pudding. It was flavored with vanilla and pulverized coconut and molded into a small ring, which was filled with red fruit coulis. Basil ice cream on the side, and a lovely decoration composed of strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, red currants, and cherries. When I picked up one of the cherries to eat it, I discovered that it had been sneakily pitted from the bottom—a nice touch. The white spheres were more blanc-manger. On the menu, this dessert was billed as gluten-free, but I'm willing to bet the crumbs under the ice cream weren't. If they were serious about the gluten thing, they'd have used, e.g., crushed hazelnuts instead.