The Lagoon Monster

A smooth and black monster, big snake-bodied and horse-headed. It's the awful vision that could appear to anyone looking from Punta della Dogana. According to the legend, a dreadful creature, similar to a huge sea snake, hides in a hollow beneath this place, surely one of the most panoramic and evocative locations in Venice. The black water monster, so it is known, is said to appear very rarely only in full moon nights, when the wind ripples water and makes moving forms undistinguishable.

The last spotting goes back to the Thirties, when two fishers, while catching squids with a small lamp, told about the monster, a few metres from them, opening a tremendously large mouth, swallowing a seagull, trying to fang some more, before sinking into water. The two recalled "the white and saw fang" and the "eighth metre-length" of the sea creature, with a diameter of approximately one metre in the widest part". While moving, the body of the creature "rhythmically waived" and the head seemed to lean on the water surface. The name "black water monster" seems to come from its preference to come out when the basin water is very dark with no moonshine.

(taken from "I segreti del Canal Grande" by Alberto Toso Fei)

The workpiece be a sea creature whose shape and inspiration come from the place it originates from,

the Lagoon of Venice, as told by the book.
It feature a stainless steel skeleton and it be coated by a skin of Murano glass scales.
A complex and innovative technological system allows the monster to live its own life,

hanging halfway between earth, air and sea.

name: the lagoon monster

size: 6500 x 1150 x H1100 mm

structure: stainless steel AISI 316

coating: 191 scales in hand worked Murano glass

overall surface: 8,2 square m

backlight system: low voltage backlight system with 60 led/m strip led IP 68

3200 kelvin iseled 5w m

hydraulic system: made with Grundfos circulator and Baccara electro valves

technology: the monster is alive thanks to an artifi cial heart, namely a crouzet

millennium 3 PLC with gsm crouzet modem for the system remote controlling

overall weight of the work: 250 kg

setting: water pool 8,000 x 4,000 x h120 mm

created in: 2011