Giger's Passage Temple Entrance:
Biomechanisation of the
Fisher Price Cot Activity Centre ?

leading from


a) Revelation while on a train
Saturday 4th of April 2015, I had been thinking about what if one of the modern versions of the Fisher Price Cot Activity Centres could be turned into the flight deck of another Juggernaut ship as seen in Prometheus and then thoughts erupted on the train home in my brain about what would HR Giger have done if he biomechanised a Fisher Price Cot Activity Centre and then thought about how it might transform into his Passage Temple entrance from 1975. Then I discovered that the Activity Centre toy came out in 1973. The next thought came to me was telling me that he already got there.


The 1973 Fisher Price Cot Activity Centre and the 1975 Giger's Passage Temple entance

b) Impressed by a Fisher Price toy?
But the idea is that Giger would have looked at this and be impressed by the amalgamation of all these different things on the surface into a confined area and then start reimagining the whole thing. 
No one said that Giger had to make the original item particularly recognisable but but I think this Fisher Price toy which in its own time was a well known item in Europe would have been a starting point. 


c) Initial comparisons
Apart from the fact that they both contain at least one horizontal roller, it would be hard to point out anything specifically that similar between anything, although maybe a form like the bell appears in a mutated state. And then Giger is likely to have reflected forms from the left side onto the right. Notice where the sarcophagus wall fragments and vaguely compares to the presence of the brick pattern from Humpty Dumpty's walls. This is almost a torturous comparison to make but the Fisher Price Cot Activity Centre deserves to be considered to be an amazing inspiring thing of its time. 






d) Comparing details
The horizontal track with the rabbit and the tortoise seems to have its representation in the form of a while horizontal bar with two blobs broken up by the sarcophagus opening. 

There's a figure with raised knees climbing up a bean stalk by the bell and the bean stalk leaves above him him and on the right of the picture there is the image of a semi humanoid things with raised knees and a a strange head over shadowing it in a similar way. 

The spirals in the spinning wheel start to turn into strange Gigeresque curved tusk fingers around the painting. The leaves of the beanstalk do perhaps too

The curvature of the semi humanoid figure in Giger's painting would also have been loosely inspired by the spinning wheel up at the right corner on the activity centre.

 At the far right, on the right of the bell on the original centre is a bean stalk and you will find these vertical plant like forms on the far right of the painting. 

You'll find horizontal arcing shapes at the top of both, I suppose where the vertical pincer like forms are found would be where the ball shape would be and in relation to that, where the top red turning nob has been put the bell has been placed. 

On the 5th of July 2015, I suddenly noticed a distorted version of the the face of the humpty dumpty within the left pincers
 
d.i) close up of details on the surface of the original Fisher Price Cot Actvity Centre
 
 
 
 
 
d.ii) Humpty dumpty, closeup, and distorted counterpart in Giger's work

 
 
 
 
d.iii) Bricks of the wall become the patterns on the right of the mandible
 
 


 
 
d.iv) The bell and breast like form 
 
 
 
 
 
d.v) vertical plant forms and vertical  tendrils
 
 
 
 
 

 
d.vi) Then the Jack on the beanstalk itself reversed is used on the other side of the painting.
 
It becomes used for the semi humanoid with raised knees.
 
His cap becomes its distorted skull, 
 
His upper body becomes the knee area.
 
The plant leaves on top become the head of the creature with its head vaguely seen above it with tendrils going down behind
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The e)  Other versions of the activity centre that came out later references Giger's Passage Temple Entrance?
 
 
c.i) A later version of the device from around the 1990s, although the bears perhaps would leave less for the imagination to Gigerise, the general layout of the parts on the device probably resemble Giger's painting, especially with the placement of the rollers at the bottom 
 
 
 
 
 
c.ii) Giger's Passage Temple Entrance next to the Fisher Price Cot Activity Centre
 
 
 
 
 
c.iii) Bell or breast and dial

 
 
 
 
c.iv) curving figure and disk

 
 
 
 
c.v) Elongated tentacle like side view of head and handle

 
 
 
 
c.vii) Atrophied Humpty dumpty head between mandibles and equivalent

 
 
 

c.viii) Ovary like forms and equivalent
 
 
 
 
 
 
c.ix) Wheel like formations and the rollers at the bottom of the of the activity centre


 
 
 
d) A more modern version of the fisher price cot activity centre.
 
 Perhaps this can be said to be taking on the general shape of a Facehugger's body but without limbs or a tale


 
 
e) Questions about the Juggernaut pilot platform
And then in later in the movie Prometheus, the flight deck of the Juggernaut ship becomes a similar sort of amalgamation of different things into one solid compact unit which was my starting point for asking the question. Perhaps the control keyboard in that movie was inspired by the rim of the sarcophagus in Giger's painting


 
 
 
f) Transformation into a the Alien Resurrection Viper's Nest
Parts of the Passage Temple Entrance found elements of it being adapted for the Viper's Nest featured in Alien Resurrection (See: Source of the Viper's Nest )



 
 
 
 
 
 

No comments:

Post a Comment