Following on from yesterday’s post about candidate finger puppets made from card, Abbey Hambright has felt finger puppets of Obama for sale.
Fold US candidates
FoldUScandidate has patterns for card finger puppets of the three US candidates. You print from a pdf and the assemble as shown. Check out the videos and photos that some people have submitted of their puppets.
Vegetarian recipes
Long ago I read that families tend to rotate only about 10 recipes, even if the ten change from time to time. So I’ve been working on finding ten or so vegetarian main dishes that I really like as a way of increasing the number of vegetarian meals we eat. I decided to put the ones I am using regularly online. (Not the prettiest interface, but simple and functional like the food – I couldn’t bear the thought of a foodie socnet!).
Handspring’s Woyzeck on the Highveld
On the last day of Unima 2008 Gary introduced me to his friends Adrian Kohler and Basil Jones, who co-founded and continue to run Handspring Puppet Company, and I was lucky enough to go backstage to see the puppets from Woyzeck on the Highveld. Thank you all!
The play itself had been a festival highlight for me. First staged 16 years ago, it tells the story of Woyzeck, a man of sensibility and principle, who is brought down by jealousy; but his struggle is informed in every way by the hardships of the migrant labour system under apartheid in the South Africa of the 1950’s.
Two aspects of the show intrigued me in particular.
One was the power of director William Kentridge’s back-projected animations which formed part of the backdrop to the set. They provided not only physical settings to the action and shadow puppets, but at times gave excruciating visual metaphors for what characters were thinking and feeling. For instance, in one scene, Woyzeck is worrying about setting his master’s table. He is doing fine in reality, but in contrast, as he gets increasingly anxious about doing it perfectly, the animation shows great smudges and spills amassing into a chaos that ends in, among other things, a plane crashing and burning.
The other was, of course, the puppets. They are bunraku-style puppets, with beautifully expressive carved (and hollowed out) wooden heads and hands. Adrian is the master puppet maker and designer. He explained how after touring Woyzeck extensively for some years, the company saw selling the puppets as the only way to move on to doing new work. Their latest production, Warhorse, would have been too big to tour, and fortunately, to their surprise, the Munich City Museum was happy to lend the puppets back for the gig at Unima 2008.
Margaret (?), Andries, with the accordion, and Maria with her baby:
The Miner:
The mysterious newspaper death-like character:
Adrian Kohler with the Miner, explaining how the implements in his hand can be changed:
The rhino, showing the rods and mechs on the operator’s side. There is a universal joint in it’s sternum. The red bulb is it’s bladder! (not to be confused with the 2 red chairs in the background).
Here is a video of the rhino in action. You can hear Gary and Adrian chatting.
I loved the rhino most, because it has so much character, and moves in such a life-like way, while being impressionistic in style. I’m very interested in this. Kohler has developed the style much further, too, since building the rhino, as you can see if you look at the horses in Warhorse. Warhorse is the first production where Handspring has moved away from performing their own work, and Adrian commented there were advantages in being solely a maker at times, rather than being a maker/puppeteer.
Incidentally, Handspring is hoping to bring out a DVD of Woyzeck, including the animations, and there is to be a new season of Warhorse in London later in 2008. There’s just a chance I might around to catch it!
Articles I enjoyed reading about Handspring:
The hoodoo of a repaired door
My ducks are so funny. I repaired the old door to their pen a couple of days ago; its the same old shape, hinges and wire, but has three sides of new timber. But will the ducks go in and out? Not on your nelly! These creatures that can so easily not notice if one of their babies goes missing, do not trust that door one inch. The first night I had to catch them individually and put them in, yesterday they didn’t come out all day, then today I had to chase them out. Now they have been lingering suspiciously outside again, but have finally decided to make the daring crossing in, lured by new pond water.
Paul Vincett: Monster Workshop puppets
I was very taken with the cool Monster Workshop puppets, particularly the leathery demon puppets (above and below right), that were sent in to the Million Puppet Project at Unima 2008. They were made by Paul Vincett, a 3D illustrator and puppet maker. They were behind glass, so difficult to photograph well, but you can find great pictures on his website, for example here or here.
About 40 of the puppets that were sent in to the Million Puppets Project were auctioned at the end of the festival, and I think the one above right brought in the highest bid of the night. Below you can see two of the furry monsters who had just been adopted on auction night, and the very pink Loverly Gloverly who also went for a top price.
There are two videos of the demon puppets online (I love the way one of them shakes its ears in such an animal kind of way):
Buried and forgotten and this one:
A tiger by the tail?
(My favourite so far: Steve Gillmor)
Despite my own mixed feelings, I’m expecting Loren Feldman’s Shel Israel parody to become the hottest puppet video show around while it lasts. Feldman has caused mischief and grief by taking the piss, and nicking the real Shel’s domain. You can read about it at Techcrunch or Karoli’s Bang the Drum, and here Feldman explains his initial impetus.
But it’s funny. As Steve Gillmor says in NewsGang Live (04.02.08, about the 45 -55 min mark), it’s the kind of thing you feel guilty about laughing at, but you can’t stop yourself. At first I was nitpicking the lip syncing, but Feldman is a quick study, and seems a natural for what works dramatically. (Update May 09 : not quick enough – he still can’t lip sync.)
I’m not sure if it’s so funny if you don’t follow the tech scene, but it’s interesting to see such a connection drawn between the tech world and the online puppetry world. There are precious few of us that follow both. I am intrigued to see who is willing to be interviewed, their differing comfort levels, and of course the power that resides in the way a puppet can ask questions and go places that a real interviewer can’t. The tech world seems to take itself fairly seriously much of the time, and I think Feldman may have a tiger by the tail with his entertaining and cutting take (though I’m sure it’s also going to be unkind and is already feeding into personality feuds). No wonder he is buying more puppets today.
Joan Baixas’ Terra Prenyada at Unima 2008
(Joan Baixas’ keynote at Unima 2008)
Gary Friedman has a small clip and description of a secret performance of Terra Prenyada (The Pregnant Earth) by the master puppeteer and Spanish artist, Joan Baixas, at Unima 2008. You can see it full screen if you watch it at YouTube. I wish I had seen the show; it looks wonderful, a fusion of painting and theatre, done on a big sheet of back-lit plastic. I gathered from Baixas’ keynote talk that he often uses ochres that he finds locally for this, and that he began doing so when he spent time in the Australian desert, collaborating with the Arabanna community in the outback of South Australia to design and make masks for the Naidoc Festival in Maree. He also mentioned that he has a new show called Toast to Zoe, improvisations of painting and piano, with jazz pianist Agustí Fernandez.
The painting reminds me of how kids sometimes tell the story as they are drawing or painting, so that it almost becomes a live animation. For example boys of about 8 or 10 draw action scenes of battles and talk through the action: one plane turns into a flight of planes, they will be given guns, which then burst into fire as marks raining down to earth, and then a plane might crash and burn; the whole narrative on one page. It also reminds me of the kind of print where you ink up the plate and make marks on it for a one-off print.
Baixas ran a masterclass at Unima 2008, too, the Great Laughing Mutant Project. The participants presented a performance on Carnival Day, using these lovely minimalist shapes in lots of different ways:
Afterwards they gave them to kids in the crowd, and the little boy in front of me was having fun with his:
My attendence at Unima 2008 is supported by the ACT Government.
The GetUp Mob
I’m not usually especially affected by multiple-celebrity-cause videos, but this one knocked me for six this morning. It’s a mashup of Kevin Rudd’s apology to the stolen generations and the iconic Kev Carmody/Paul Kelly song From Little Things Big Things Grow, devised by GetUp’s Brett Solomon and inspired by the Will.I.Am video made in support of Obama in the US. I guess it tapped straight into my happiness that many things that would have been unbelievable a year ago are starting to happen.
I’m also happy to see Paul Kelly endorse that idea that recognises that zealous copyrighting impoverishes creativity and cultural well-being. Kev Carmody did the same at the From Little Things concert that we went to in the Sydney Festival in January:
From Little Things Big Things Grow has its roots in songs like Woody Guthrie’s Deportees and The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll by Bob Dylan. And those songs grew out of the soil of other older songs. The Get Up Mob just added another branch to the tree. Long may it fruit
