Archetypes

It took me a few days but in the end I understood: motorbikes are like warships.

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I realised this at the Ducati 2015 World Première, at which new bikes from the global brand are presented for the very first time. The idea that warships and advanced naval weaponry systems reminded me of something came to me at Euronaval, the largest naval defence trade show. I kept wondering about it as I watched these presentations of weaponry systems or the maritime surveillance network, Marsur.

I watched the series of images, which looked like so many videogames or MTV videos, and tried to pin down the style of the show. I was immersed in an augmented reality in which my perceptions were amplified by the very fact that I was close to instruments designed to expand sensory capacities.
Sometime later I attended the Ducati première, quite by chance and out of personal curiosity. And in the promo films and technical specs of the motorbikes I recognised the same emotions – the same nervous system reactions – I had experienced at Euronaval.

The similarities could also extend to semantics (for example the use of the term “configuration”) and materials (carbon fibre first and foremost for its appearance).
But the closest and yet the most ambiguous comparison leads me to consider motorbikes and weapons as expressions of our species' primary drives, the materialisation of myths, cultural archetypes. James Hillman, the philosophical and psychological visionary who passed away a few years ago, would call them the “constants of the human dimension”. All too human.

About similarities: listen to the two soundtracks
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