Eiffel Tower: POV

Eiffel Tower Parasitic Structure


Film: Static POV shot
Runs for approx: 120 seconds
Location: Top of the Eiffel Tower, lying on viewing platform looking down
POV: You are the person waiting for the bullet


*BEGIN*
Black (or white) screen: Possibly uses extremely out-of-focus film/image from top of tower.


Sound of the wind fades in: Actual sound recorded from top of Tower, possibly including background noise like car horns, sirens, [very very faint] but no voices. Also possibly very faint sound of breathing. Just a few seconds.


Screen slowly focuses: You see that there is ground far below, out of focus, extremely faint, possible tiny movements? Small parts of Tower structure? Probably filmed from the Tower if we could get an acceptable angle. This is a shot I can visualise but find hard to explain…


Focus settles on a space not far in front of you, where there is the top of a ‘tube’: Again I can visualise but find hard to explain…


This carries on for *?* seconds, with the blurry ground, the tube directly in front, and the faint sound of the wind.


*AFTER 60 SECONDS*
There is a loud sound, a click, a buzzer, a siren: Not sure what would fit here. It means that the gun has been fired. Now you are really waiting…


*?? SECONDS AFTER THE SOUND*
The bullet (suddenly?) grows large in the frame as it emerges from the top of the tube and stops a few centimetres from your face: Has to be very close, but not so close you can’t focus on it. Perhaps there is the faint sound of an intake of breath, or holding breath – depends if this is part of the sound at all.


The bullet slowly turns: It is a small cone-shaped projectile and you see it stop fleetingly, pivot and fall away again.


Screen focus switches back to the top of the tube: The bullet is falling back to the ‘collection point’. Again we are waiting, looking at the tube and listening to the wind.


*?? SECONDS AFTER THE BULLET STOPPED*
There is another sound, a click, a buzzer, a siren, different to the first one: It means that the bullet has landed back on the ground.


Abrupt end: The screen goes black (or white) and the sound stops.


*END*

lets get me a test hat.

Aerial view of ak47 simulation device and operators.

Real life and Futurama

Man shot by killer robot

Tony Wilson

19 Mar 08

AN 81-year-old Gold Coast man built, and yesterday used, an intricate suicide machine to remotely shoot himself, after downloading the plans from the internet.

The Burleigh Heads man, who lived alone, left notes of his plans and thoughts as he struggled to come to terms with demands by interstate relatives that he move out his home and into care.

He spent hours searching the internet for a way to kill himself, downloaded what he needed and then built a complex machine that would remotely fire a gun.

He set the device up in his driveway about 7am yesterday, placed himself in front of it and set it in motion.

The Gold Coast Bulletin will not reveal how the machine worked, but it was attached to a .22 semi-automatic pistol loaded with four bullets.

Flippin' heck.

Here is my sophisticated 3D rendering of the Reiffel Tower Souvenir (mark 1):



Original photo taken from here.

The Pursuader

A machine gun shaped handbag.

Then there's The Peace-keeper


These are by a guy named James Piatt and there's more on his website. To be honest I don't quite know what to think about any of it. There's a lot of 'glamour' photos of women in odd situations. One poor woman is completely swamped by potatoes and only has a shiny handbag for protection.

M16 Ammo [inert]

Let's get some.

.223 (5.56mm) Inert Ammo
.223 (UK calibre 5.56mm)inert ammunition, used in the SA80 and LSW plus the M16 and AR15 etc, free from explosive, no licence required

Price:
£0.78

[sorry about the teeny picture, it's straight from this website but it is a spitzer like we want]

Magic Bullet

I've already told you both about this but here it is anyway for the record. A Bullet bow shockwave captured as a Shadowgraph. It's what all the wibbly wobbly CGI was showing in the Matrix. Below at "d" is an AK-47.

New version of tower drawing, at an increased depth, it now has a bullet retrieval tank with dense liquid and 400mm of rubber.

The Rifle Tower

Hideous puns are one of my special skills, so I just thought I’d get that out of the way.

I like the idea that this is about witnessing something impossible, and I think there are more things to add: especially using existing tourism as a way to further ‘parasite’ one thing off another.

But I also think it is important that it is presented in a thoroughly convincing way [which is why Jimmy’s drawings need to include evidence of physical feasibility]. So I have decided to try and solve the height question as realistically as possible.

Most of the online info is related to terminal velocity, where people are interested in calculating how much force bullets exert on the way down (can bullets kill you when they fall to ground after being discharged kind of thing).

Physics and Maths forums have interesting stuff relating to height, but it looks like the only accurate data is mathematical and relies on a vacuum. Here they are talking about enormous possible heights. But one poster says (my bold):

to the two guys with the math formula's "stop" you are not going to find a bullet that 45000 meters!!!!! ever!!!! 50km is roughly 32 miles, large Field Artillery can't reach that far. A large caliber rifle like a Barrett .50 sniper rifle will go about two miles, straight up, a little less. Small caliber rifles like a M-16 with a .223 or just a bit bigger .308 will go between 550-1000 meters. really small caliber like a .22 will be about 300 meters.

This is the best I have found as far as actual height is concerned (about 2/3 of the way down the page):

In 1920 the U.S. Army Ordnance conducted a series of experiments to try and determine the velocity of falling bullets. The tests were performed from a platform in the middle of a lake near Miami, Florida. The platform was ten feet square and a thin sheet of armor plate was placed over the men firing the gun. The gun was held in a fixture that would allow the gun to be adjusted to bring the shots close to the platform. It was surmised that the sound of the falling bullets could be heard when they hit the water or the platform. They fired .30 caliber, 150 gr., Spitzer point bullets, at a velocity of 2,700 f.p.s. Using the bullet ballistic coefficient and elapsed time from firing until the bullet struck the water, they calculated that the bullet traveled 9,000 feet in 18 seconds and fell to earth in 31 seconds for a total time of 49 seconds.

As a comparison, the .30 caliber bullet fired in a vacuum at 2,700 f.p.s. would rise nearly 21.5 miles and require 84 seconds to make the ascent and another 84 seconds to make its descent. It would return with the same velocity that it left the gun. This gives you some idea of what air resistance or drag does to a bullet in flight.

Out of the more than 500 shots fired from the test platform only 4 falling bullets struck the platform and one fell in the boat near the platform. One of the bullets striking the platform left a 1/16 inch deep mark in the soft pine board. The bullet struck base first.

Again, they were interested in terminal velocity more than how high the bullets went, but we can take 2 important things from this;
1. It was a practical test in which a named bullet was fired and an estimated height was obtained (9000 feet in 18 seconds which is about 2743m I think...).
2. It was extremely difficult to get the bullets back to ground within the target area: there was considerable horizontal movement.

There are lots of scary equations here and a calculator which might be useful here but it doesn't give height only time.

The Parasitic Spectacular

I really like your choice of the Eiffel tower - the tower is an icon with a view. Millions of people every year go up the tower for a romantic view of Paris. I think it's a touch of genius to subvert the view to something more unexpected... something never seen before.

This got me thinking about two main things - 'witnessing the unimaginable' and the 'parasitic view' - free riding on a popular attraction.


People are always fascinating in witnessing the unusual, unexpected, impossible, unlikely moment of seeing something - the northern lights, a solar eclipse, freeze frame of a bullets impact, a nuclear explosion [i realize that my categorization is extremely sloppy!]. Could the project be a range of installations, objects and propositions for 'witnessing the unimaginable'.


The 'parasitic view' builds physical parasites to feed off the power of mass tourism... it uses stealth tactics to calm the attention of unsuspecting visitors.

A bullet for each building

Except that the Gherkin might need an arrow.

The effective range of the M16 is 274 metres. By effective I assume it could hurt someone if they were standing in front of it or lying above it.

The Eiffel tower is roughly 324 metres tall so it might be a little short.

This is a quick drawing for a structure that parasites off existing architecture, allowing people to watch a bullet fired from a gun as it stops and falls back to earth.

During the research I found out that people are occasionally killed by falling bullets from celebratory gunfire. I also found out that the largest recorded movement at the top of the Eiffel tower is 9cm, which is less than i thought it would be.