I’ve added some more blogs to the puppetry directory over in my sidebar there. It’s getting to be quite a list now, and I think I still have a few to add. You will also notice that, thanks to the guys at Grazr, you can now launch the program in a new window and expand it, so it becomes easier to read, and choose between the slider view or an outline view.
technology
Puppetsfeed
Jose at Titereblog has followed up his puppetry search engine with Puppetsfeed, a site where feeds about puppets and puppetry are being collected and listed. It’s a great idea, and it looks attractive, too. I’m enjoying the feeling that another person on the other side of the world is thinking in similar ways about using new technologies to share these things. I’m beginning to think I will have to learn Spanish, Jose! – it’s wonderful that you do so much in English.
I’ve also recently come across Jose’s Directorio de compañías y espectáculos de marionetas. Am I right that this is a directory of puppetry theatre companies in the Spanish-speaking world, Jose? I’m not sure if I should list it in Spanish or English in my OPML directory that’s running in the sidebar. Which would you like?
Updated links 2015
Puppetry Worldview directory
I’ve been fiddling around making an OPML directory of online puppet links. I’m just feeling my way, and at the moment I don’t know how selective I want to be or how far I want to take it. It may turn out to be not very far, though it does have the capacity to include other people’s lists through distributed data entry. You can see it in my sidebar over there on the right. Try clicking all the way through on the blogs and Aussie websites; those are the ones I have been concentrating on.
Thanks to Dave Winer (OPML, OPML Editor) and Mike Kowalchik (Grazr).
Updated 2015.
Titereblog’s cool puppetry search engine
Jose at titereblog has built a specialized puppetry search engine using Swiki. How cool is that! Thanks for the link to my puppetry links at del.icio.us (edited Oct 2014 – link now defunct), too, Jose.
I’ve just realized that my favourite puppetry blogs like titereblog and PuppetVision weren’t in my del.icio.us pages, because I am subscribed to their feeds, and read their posts as a matter of course. So I’ve added them now, and will try to add the other puppetry blogs I read as well. I’ve been meaning to make a proper list of them in my sidebar, too. Should get around to doing that.
Mapping puppeteers and makers
Andrew at PuppetVision is has started a map of the locations of puppeteers and puppet builders around the world using the new Frappr! mapping service. It’s a cool idea. If you are a puppeteer or maker, check out the details, and add yourself to the map.
Especially if you are in Australasia – I’m feeling a bit lonesome out here all on my own!
A Meander towards a Fourth Dimension
I like the old stonework and bluest of blues in Oxford Blue, a photo by Robert Silverwood. And it reminds me of my Cyber Hall drawing which was to be a virtual Union building site map for the Indiana Uninversity Alumnii Association. It was my friend Amy’s initiative, and we worked closely together on it, as we did at Pemberley.
A while ago, Amy was musing about Kosso’s question, are you a createc?
‘I’m not as programmery but can find my way around under the hood. I
have less graphics savvy, and lean a little more to the verbal side.
Maybe there should be a scale with those three dimensions or aspects to
measure one’s createc quotient (C.Q.).’
I think there is maybe a fourth dimension as well, which Amy has in spades. Its an openess to the fluidity and feedback loops in the non-linear creative process: the ability to share and trigger creativity in others, and be open to and build on ideas coming back.
OPML
I feel like I have been away, and in a way I have. I’ve been playing around with Dave Winer’s OPML editor and outliner which also has a blogging tool. I only have a hazy idea of the technical side of it, but it’s addictive.
Thanks
Thanks to Jose at titereblog for pointing out to me a few weeks ago that I could put a Creative Commons licence on my photos at Flickr.
I’m reminded of Lawrence Lessig‘s free culture presentation, which has the refrain:
*Creativity and innovation always builds on the past.
*The past always tries to control the creativity that builds upon it.
*Free societies enable the future by limiting this power of the past.
*Ours is less and less a free society.
Katinka Matson: flatbed scanner imaging
Katinka Matson makes stunning images of flowers and other natural objects, using a flatbed scanner and other new technologies:
“The process involves scanning flowers and other natural objects on an open-top scanner from underneath the objects with a slo-moving sensor. This technique allows for unusual opportunities to explore new ideas involving light, time, and rhythm.
It is a radically new digital aesthetic involving both new hardware (the scanner and the inkjet printer), and software (Adobe Photoshop), that allows for a new naturalism fusing nature and technology.
Without the distortion of the lens, highly detailed resolution is uniform throughout the image, regardless of the size of the printable media. The lighting effects from the sliding sensor beneath the object, coupled with overhead effects involving lighting and movement, result in a 3-D-like imaging of intense sharpness and detail. Images created by scanning direct-to-CCD cut away layers, and go to a deeper place in us than our ordinary seeing and vision. “
There are three archived galleries of her images: “Five Flowers”; “Forty Flowers”; “Twelve Flowers”.
