make

Slow Making

Slow Making is a new blog setting out to explore how the philosophy that started with the slow food movement might be applied to making. Should be interesting.

(via Ampersand Duck)

Greetings from Australia for OneWebDay


Greetings from Australia for OneWebDay yesterday/today! A few months ago I started making a sculpture or puppet, with the intention of it being performed in a public place on the day, but yesterday, the 22nd here, was so windy I would have got blown away, and today is, too. I’ve just updated my Flickr set of the making process, and maybe later there will be pictures of it in action. There is more of an explanation for the puppet with the photos at Flickr.

Alas poor Daisy, I knew her well…

It’s the local Australian Science Festival in Canberra, as well as National Science Week. In today’s Canberra Times there’s a picture of a CSIRO Double Helix Science Club educational demonstration in which a presenter is extracting methane from ‘a life-sized flatulent cow called Belching Buttercup’. I recognize the cow as my dear Daisy. Poor Daisy. She has been given makeshift ill-proportioned spotty hindquarters, and Double Helix stickers, and while it’s nice that she isn’t in storage and is kicking up her heels in a new life, I kind of wish she hadn’t become grist for the endless ‘kids will only get into science if they think its gee-whizz fun’ mill, and the tiresome and inaccurate ‘kids are only interested in fart jokes and icky smelly substances’ attitude:

“Belching Buttercup is a new edition (sic) to the show. The whole idea is to show kids climate change and greenhouse science in a fun way that they are going to remember. When you look at it, it may just be one long fart joke, but it is really a profound way for kids to remember about climate change and some of the ways they can solve it, and that is a really important message.”

So they should stop farting? Of course, there is nothing wrong with a good fart joke. But kids are generally wonderfully curious, interested in making sense of the world around them and how it works (maybe more than adults), and they make connections in novel ways because they are new to the world. I think it does them a disservice to expect that they will not be interested in anything unless it’s presented as a fart joke.

Smile on your bother: OneWebDay

Face-1

OneWebDay, 22 September, is a global celebration of online life. I was hoping to make a couple of big puppets or sculptures for the day, but I have three current work projects that all culminate at exactly that time, so I am not sure if I will get anything together in time to use offline on the day. I do have some images (see below instead) up of what I have had in mind, and have been working on. This kind of brings together my appreciation of the blogging medium and Dave Winer‘s role in developing it, and the richness I feel from being able to see what friends, puppet builders, crafters, street artists and puppeteers are doing around the world. (Thanks to Amy for the post title – it’s perfect!)

Perhaps puppeteers could pick up the idea and put on a show in their town on the day? Perhaps something similar to Project Puppet‘s Glorified Sock Puppet Contest could be run in honour of OneWebDay? Perhaps Swazzle‘s Sean Johnson could encourage his peas to send a special greeting, or other puppeteers record a video message with their puppets? Perhaps, Kath, WhipUp could prompt crafters to become enthused in some way? It’s probably ripe ground for Extreme Crafters, too. And artist trading cards. And so on… Perhaps there are bloggers here in Canberra who have some ideas for the day?

OneWebDay

Updated links 2015

L’objet fantastique: Cthulhu doll

L’objet fantastique has an amazing Cthulhu doll made from leather. There are some more photos here. The internal skeleton is made from dense rubber, and I think this is the wing mechanism.

Mainframe computer suit

Waistcoat

Here are some photos of the mainframe computer suit I made this past week. It was for the theatre group A Bunch of Posers, for a performance at an event that marked the closing down of the Australian Bureau of Statistics mainframe computer. The waistcoat and back are my favourites.

Impermanence

Today I am continuing making a costume: decorating a suit so that it suggests a mainframe computer. Don’t ask. I’m using some of the stencils that I made for my computer bug traffic control box painting last year. I eventually found out that the reason the painting had disappeared was because a car crashed into it and totally demolished it! I asked about the remains, but they had already been disposed of. I could paint the box again, but I decided, at least while it’s winter, to meditate on the beauty of process and impermanence in art ;-).

Puppet face

Face

I just love sculpting clay and papermache, my very favourite work processes.