← A. Inventions, No. 47
Ábrahám Kotrč (1789–1851)
The Dragon Lyre
c. 1840
Workshop of Ábrahám Kotrč, fl. 1820–1840, Olomouc, Moravia (Czech Republic.) Lacquered spruce facing with gilded purfling over boxwood, copper, steel. 14¾ × 16 × 7⅜". Collection of the author.
The ‘dragon lyre’ is one of the most formidable instruments in western music. A native of the Margraviate of Moravia, in the modern Czech Republic, it was reserved for the exclusive use of the Royal Hussars — ultimately for ceremonial purposes, but originally for the battlefield.
Not technically a lyre at all, which by the Hornbostel-Sachs (Sachs-Hornbostel) classification must have strings attached to a yoke on the same plane as the sound table, the dragon lyre is more correctly a variation of the gittern, the vihuela-like plucked instrument characterized by multiple courses of double strings. According to Wikipedia, the third of only three surviving gitterns was recently discovered in a medieval outhouse in Elbląg, Poland. For more, perhaps see Polišenský, The Thirty Years' War and the Crises and Revolutions of Seventeenth-Century Europe.
Published January 26, 2023. Copyright © 2023 Jonathan Hoefler.
About
The objects in the Apocryphal Inventions series are technical chimeras, intentional misdirections coaxed from the generative AI platform Midjourney. Instead of iterating on the system’s early drafts to create ever more accurate renderings of real-world objects, creator Jonathan Hoefler subverted the system to refine and intensify its most intriguing misunderstandings, pushing the software to create beguiling, aestheticized nonsense. Some images have been retouched to make them more plausible; others have been left intact, appearing exactly as generated by the software. The accompanying descriptions, written by the author, offer fictitious backstories rooted in historical fact, which suggest how each of these inventions might have come to be.
These images represent some of AI’s most intriguing answers to confounding questions, an inversion of the more pressing debate in which it is humanity that must confront the difficult and existential questions posed by artificial intelligence.
Previously:
No. 46. Home Monitoring Machines
Next:
No. 48. WWII Ration Meters
