The line up of interested parties for Puppet Rampage 2007 looks pretty cool. Puppet Rampage is the biennial National Puppetry Festival produced by the Puppeteers of America, to be held in St.Paul, MN, in July 17-22, 2007.
Puppet in Berlin
(photo credit: irlLordy, used with permission – thanks!)
irlLordy took a great sequence (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) of photos of a cool puppet entertaining the queue on the steps of the Reichstag in Berlin recently. I really like the aethetic, and it’s interesting to see a bunraku-style puppet being operated on such long rods. The puppeteers – are there five? – must have a really good understanding between them. Apparently the puppet did matrix-like leaps off someone’s shoulders in slow motion at one point. Please do let me know if you happen to know which puppet troupe this is – I’d love to know!
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)
Cool photos of Beck
(photo credit: Scott Beale/Laughing Squid)
Laughing Squid is one of my long time favourite blogs; I enjoy the mix of tech and visual arts, and Scott Beale’s photos. Today Scott has the best photos of Beck’s puppets I’ve seen yet, taken at Yahoo! Hack Day.
More Royal de Luxe
I’ve been keeping a list of Royal de Luxe links since I first became aware of them last June. This weekend I believe The Sultan’s Elephant is in Calais, and then in La Havre at the end of October (26 – 29th).
The producers who brought The Sultan’s Elephant to London in June this year are bringing out a book of photos, reminiscences and articles about the event which will be published in November.
Meanwhile, some lovely Royal de Luxe photos at Flickr:
Le Grand Géant in the water at Pont Du Gard in August (by krisyid)
The Giraffes in Le Harve earlier in September (by jeffreyhill)
Machines of Spectacle at Le Grand Repertoire in Paris (by Tekrotzen)
Most recent Royal de Luxe photos
Giant Icelandic marionette
This is a still from a video of a giant marionette in Reykjavik, Iceland. It’s being operated by three helicopters! There are some other videos here. I can’t find any other information about it, which is strange, but people seem to think it was being filmed as a viral ad for jeans. It makes me think of my favourite Roald Dhal book, The BFG.
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.
Laura Neuvonen’s The Last Knit
This lovely animation about knitting obsession, is written directed and animated by the Finnish animator, Laura Neuvonen.
(via CRAFT Magazine)
Cool new puppet building wiki
Andrew at PuppetVision Blog, with others, has been working on setting up the Puppet Building Wiki, a new, collaborative project to create an online encyclopedia of free, open and accessible puppet building knowledge, tutorials and patterns for all types of puppets. Much like Wikipedia, the site’s open format allows anyone to create or edit any article. They’re asking puppet builders around the world to help the site achieve it’s goal – creating the most comprehensive database of puppet
building information in the world.
If anyone would like to help out and share their puppet building knowledge, information, tutorials or patterns you can help out by editing an existing article or starting a new one. Puppet builders can also visit the site’s Puppet Building Blog which will be updated several times each week with puppet building news, information, tutorials and resources.
