Dutch Artist Admits Faking Viral 'Human Bird Wing' Video

Velcroman1 writes "Dutch filmmaker and animator Floris Kaayk in collaboration with media production company Revolver fessed up to creating a 'media art project' that took the world by storm in recent days — a video of inventor Jarno Smeets taking flight by flapping his arms. But like the wax melting from Icarus' wings, the truth is finally emerging. Kaayak admitted that he didn't expect the media attention his project would generate, with over 8.9 million views across the world. He made the project in collaboration with Revolver and Omroep NTL, sources in the Netherlands who have spoken to the filmmaker said prior to the show. They admitted their hoax Thursday evening on the Dutch television show Wereld Draait Door."

Comments

Not Surprising.

[biohazard35]

Honestly, people have been trying to use bird wings to fly for hundreds of years. There wasn't really much chance of this being real considering that every design that used human flight via wings (excluding gliders of course) have failed.

Re: Not Surprising.

[scottrocket]

To be fair, the troll who made the videos did claim that motors were providing 95% of the net power. That made it a good bit more plausible.

And visually - without deep inspection - it looked like a pretty good fake! Why wasn't this story on /.? :)

Re: Not Surprising.

[Eponymous Hero]

muscles have nothing to do with it. all wings considered equal, the only thing stopping them from helping us fly is our lack of hollow bones.

Re: Not Surprising.

[ColdWetDog]

Uncanny valley sort of thing. I agree with the ILM folks (hey, isn't that a smart thing to do?) - the wings and wing motion were just not fluid enough. Also lousy focus and jerky motions are easy things to do to hide GCI bits.

Avatar it's not.

Re: Not Surprising.

[Joce640k]

The obvious fail was that the fabric in the wings wasn't even tense, it was looser than the aforementioned vagina. There's no way it was being used as a wing.

Re:Justice must be served

[Anonymous Coward]

Lolwut

This is awesome

[sideslash]

The world needs to be reminded periodically not to take itself so seriously.

Re:Poor schlubs

[joh]

Why stupid? They got half the Internet viewing a video and discussing if it is real or not. That was well done and they obviously got everything out of it that they wanted and then some. If they had included some visible motors and a fake battery pack (hey, 2000 Watts for 60 seconds is just 33 Wh, less than the 45 Wh of an iPad) and put more work into the flapping of the wings, it would have more convincing, but still.

Harmless fun, cleverly done, I'd say.

Re:Frak anatomy, the video SEEMS unrealistic

[tibit]

You can take almost any bird and fill its bones and it'd still fly. Bones are an optimization, not a flight-enabler. Birds can carry stuff, after all, and sometimes that stuff can be pretty heavy and weigh way more than the bird's entire skeleton.