The Beak & The Bicycle
For her 2011 piece The Beak & The Bicycle, Isabella made three devices from detritus found in her attic.Inspired by Umberto Eco’s Island of The Day Before, Isabella made a device to measure longitude, a device to turn the world into film, and a device to help you see like a bird from discarded toys, furniture, mobility aids, sticks, wallpaper and ribbons. All three were exhibited at Newcastle University’s Postgraduate Summer Show.
“What of the loch or the navicella, or whatever you choose to call it?.. here is what Father Caspar had constructed: a box with two vertical poles, one that wound as the other unwound a cord of fixed length. equivalent to a fixed number of miles…”
— Umberto Eco, The Island of the Day Before (1994)