Do you dare to eat a peach?

Posted by hil

peach sculpture

There’s a giant peach sculpture in Sydney at the moment; it’s really an advertisement for Ella Bache skin products. They are real peaches, but only skin deep, being supported by a steel armature and polystyrene, as you can see from the short making of video. I wonder what kind of glue sticks peaches and if they had to use industrial strength botox to preserve them? After all it looks as if the peaches were attached before the piece was moved into place. LPlater saw the peaches being spray-painted and touched up after a week. I’m not sure whether to think that ironic or true to the nature of the advertiser’s business. Both probably. Has anyone or any creature taken a nibble? It doesn’t look like it. All very bizarre.

peach sculpture

Waving his sweat stick

Posted by hil

hippo suit

Of course, I’m wondering about the making of the 90 kilogram hippo suit, with the head cast apparently made from a real hippopotamus, and finished in fibreglass! But the whole story, with pictures, is pure laughter. (Don’t miss the video) Favourite quote:

He got close enough to them but they passed by him on the opposite side to the one on which he was waving his sweat stick.

What exactly was he was going to do with his sweat stick, tickle under their arms perhaps? And can’t you imagine the advertising for (lets hope synthetic) wild hippo sweat sunblock? And will we find some baggage handlers careering around in the hippo suit one day? :)

Wonderful zany shadow puppets

Posted by hil

Take a look at Professor Litmus Lenticular III’s photoset of wonderful zany shadow puppet characters.

A little heffalump

Posted by hil

Elephant

I’m starting to get fond of the little elephant that I have been making over the last few days. That’s always a good sign.

Elephant

He can do tricks! And now has cool trunk to look down modestly while trying to pretend he isn’t a Brave and Clever Elephant.

Elephant

I have to set him aside to finish in March now, as I have to move on a couple of other projects that are vying for my time.

Warhorse: in pictures

Posted by hil

warhorse

Warhorse, showing at the National Theatre in London, has some absolutely stunning life-size horse puppets, designed and made by Basil Jones and Adrian Kohler from the South African Handspring Puppet Company.

Made of cane and gauze, plywood and bicycle brake-cable, nylon cord and leather, they are moved from the inside by actors, who can clearly be seen through the horses’ skeletal bamboo frames; another human steers the head, so that the steeds nuzzle, twitch their ears, shiver with fear, rear in fright, roll their lustrous eyes; they also neigh and snicker. The actors are the inner lives of the beasts: when one horse dies, sinking to its knees and then lying, as a silvery grey skeleton, on its side, you see the puppeteers rolling out of the frame as if they were a band of souls leaving a body. After battle, the stage is covered in emptied carcasses, like dressmakers’ dummies. – Suzannah Clapp, review in The Guardian

The Guardian also has a gallery of images that tell the story, as well as providing the best photographs of the puppets that I have come across. Of course, much of the magic is in their movement: there is a glimpse of that in this ‘what the audience thinks’ video.

There are some other reviews at The Independent, Daily Telegraph, The Times, and the London Theatre Guide.

(via Puppetry News)

Previously:

FlickrFan for funerals?

Posted by hil

These days images are often shown at funerals. It is usually grainy old family photos looping on a roll-down portable screen. Imagine, instead, the church having a HDTV, and that you can stream chosen image feeds to it from your computer. If family and friends wanted to, they could contribute feeds that would become part of the source material for the screen display. This is one great use I can see for Dave Winer’s new product,  FlickrFan.

Used in a more private setting, its easy to see it being useful for family photo viewing and so on. I have reservations about it being used as a way to provide an ambience in one’s living room. I find image (and especially moving image) too arresting to treat as part of the background in a social situation, unless I’m inured to the footage. So it might either highjack conversation, or at the other extreme become like muzak. I also worry if it will be pitched by some as a great solution to having an acre of black flat screen in your lounge.  I think those big flat screens chew up a lot of energy, and to have them running a screen saver all the time only increases the energy usage. As far as the planet is concerned we have to be learning to turn things off more, rather than keeping them on in the background.

Luca: La Raza’s giant boy puppet

Posted by hil

Luca, a giant boy puppet supporting the La Raza soccer team seems likely to have been inspired by the Royal de Luxe ones, don’t you think?