Jon Voss

Spoken in English. Their words, as they said them.

I think to see the look on people's faces when they look at something they've never seen before and maybe they've never even imagined, The thought that something so unique could suddenly materialize in a rural part of South France, known for the wine, and to suddenly be flying around in the sky, you know, you switch on YouTube and there's a flying bird. Where's that come from? Who made that? And it's just come out of some remote little village in the South Of France by some random artist who's got obsessive and done it. That's that's the drive. That's what pushes me. It's to to just change people's perceptions of what can be done.

To to think that anyone can do something, it sounds a bit cheesy and stuff, but I think it's it's important. Like, you know, a a little kid seeing a four meter flying bird taped to the air, that could change someone's life. If I'd seen that when I was five years old, that would have changed my life. And I think it's important for that as much as any other human innovation, technical, artistic approach to beauty, any of that. It's just changing people's preconceptions as to what can be done and how it should be done. And flight's magic. Flight's intriguing. You know? Flight's cool.

So, for me, the beauty of the art is the movement. It's the intoxicating movement. And in nature, I think there's I mean, nature is full of movement. But if I can think of any creature that has this intoxicating complex movement. It's a bird. The way they fly, everything is just so fine tuned. I can sit in my window and I can see these birds and I watch them on windy days, all the crows over there. And I've seen crows fly up to their perch backwards. Backwards, uphill, come up, land and all the other birds kind of look around, not bad, not bad, check this. And they'd fly off and they do their little things, and I've seen birds flying upside down to show off. I mean they're just the technicality of being able to do that is incredible. There's nothing like it. And when when you compare that to a drone with a computer on board, with a self leveling system, with a GPS, all this stuff whizzing away, it's just Technology should not lead the way, you know? Nature should always guide us. We should learn from nature and let that be the influencer. Let that tell us how to do things.

When I was a kid, I used to I remember going bird watching with with a ablation and I thought, bird watching? Who's gonna go and sit in a hut for hours, look at a pond and from 200 meters away look at a couple of birds? I didn't get it. Right? And I love flying. You showed me a big machine with big engines. I'd love that. You want me to sit and look at a small pigeon sized bird from 200 miles. I didn't get it. But now I get it. It's funny when you when you investigate something and you start to get into it and you really analyze it, then then you're interested. Now I can't stop looking. I spend every waking minute looking but I flick my eyes to try and get that moment to snapshot what the wing is doing, you know, and it's happening so fast. Even slow motion cameras frame by frame it's still hard to see what's going on. So I get that and I think so many people get that. So many people, not only the movement but the beauty of birds, they're just absolutely fascinating.

I think my art is about movement. It's It's not aesthetic. I tried doing art that gave a message and it seems shallow to give a message. People don't need to be told a message. People have their own ideas and and so they should. So I need to do an art that's beautiful. We all do. I was to sit in a room with a ballerina and one spinning round and pirouetting and every moment of that movement comes together to create a triple somersault and a leap. If you didn't get it absolutely perfect, there'd be no leap, you wouldn't get as high. All the movement, all the momentum has to happen at the right moment to make that come together to get so high. And it's beautiful. It's amazing. How does that come together? How does that movement work?

There's something about forgetting our roots, you know, forgetting nature or, you know, we're so consumed about progressing and advancing and creating that we kind of lose the beauty, the essence. What are we all doing here? You want to inspire people? Make a flying bird, you know? Make something tangible that people can understand, can relate to, that people enjoy. It can be practical. There's all sorts of practical elements to it. I just think if we can concentrate on what's in front of us, on the millions of years of evolution that have developed a bird into the most beautiful, elegant, mechanically sound idea, why can't we focus on that? Why can't that be what drives us? Why can't that be give us passion?

You have to find what you like, don't you? Find what you were dreaming of when you were a kid. I think we've all it's too easy to forget what we were dreaming of when we were kids. I think kids is the true us. You know, when you're young, you're not marked by, you know, what what you're supposed to do, all this stuff around us. You just you know what you like. You know what you wanna do. You know. You wanna be a fireman? Great. You know, you wanna fly? Great. You know, that's cool. We should all be kids. I'm a kid. I aim every day to remain a kid. I think that's important. I think if we all have the inner kid, let it out. You know? If the adult tells him to be quiet and go back and do the normal thing, tell the adult to be the kid. That's what I say. Yeah, that's all I got.