A Multimedia Exploration of the Story of Vulcan, Blending Film, Poetry, Sound, Music, Art and Science
For the final Cradle of Fire screening in Cambridge, we booked to stay overnight in a Premier Inn in the heart of the city centre. A celebratory drink was on the cards for the team that night.
We arrived to check in at dusk and had a quick turnaround to make it to the venue in time. The hotel was down a quiet side street next to the Lion Yard shopping centre. I’d noticed some sort of sculpture outside the hotel entrance but it was too dark to see what it was.
The next morning, I went to investigate this incongruously positioned artwork. To my surprise. I found it was a bronze sculpture of Talos, the giant, robot built by the Greek god Hephaestus to protect Minoan Crete from invaders. I let out a whoop, much to the surprise of shoppers on a bench opposite.
Talos sculpture by Michael Ayrton in Cambridge Wiki commons image by Dr Zak 2006
Hephaestus was the Greek equivalent of Vulcan – the god of fire, blacksmithing and volcanoes. He precedes Vulcan. Much of the Roman mythology is based on that of the ancient Greeks.
I was made aware of Talos thanks to a colleague at Sheffield Hallam University, who is studying a PhD in how robotics are portrayed in the media. The automaton is one of the earliest examples of the concept of artificial beings in literature and myth. Made of bronze – like the Cambridge sculpture – the giant was said to be impervious to weapons and almost indestructible. He was an example of the outstanding metalwork skills of Hephaestus. He was also a semi-living being, Dean explained, who would hurl boulders at approaching enemy ships.
The demise of Talos is related in the story of Jason and the Argonauts when a plug in a vein of vital liquid in his body is removed.
As I circled Michael Ayrton’s sculpture, pigeons scratched around the base of its concrete plinth.
Descriptive plaque beneath the bronze sculpture of Talos. Photo Credit. David Clarke
The narrowness of the street and high-rise buildings made it difficult to appreciate the representation of the mythological giant. It didn’t seem a fitting location. And why Talos and why Cambridge?
I don’t know the answers. But the discovery was one of those strange coincidental happenings – and an exciting one.
Blog by Carolyn Waudby
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