The UK contemporary puppetry company Folded Feather recently built two large spectacular puppets out of car parts for Hyundai’s New Thinkers Index, a campaign ‘about new thinking and new possibilities’.
Previously: Folded Feather’s chickens
puppetry
Interactive Kinect Puppets
Shortly after the Kinect was launched in late 2010 Emily Gobeille and Theo Watson from Design I/O used it make a quick interactive puppet protoype by skeleton tracking on an arm. Their updated 2.0 installation above, Puppet Parade, looks great fun, allowing
children to use their arms to puppeteer larger than life creatures projected on the wall in front of them. Children can also step in to the environment and interact with the puppets directly, petting them or making food for them to eat. This dual interactive setup allows children to perform alongside the puppets, blurring the line between the ‘audience’ and the puppeteers and creating an endlessly playful dialogue between the children in the space and the children puppeteering the creatures.
The unedited clip where it is easier to see the movements in more focus is also interesting. Although these are made differently they share some qualities with Philip Worthington’s earlier Shadow Monsters.
A giant air-powered spider puppet
This fantastic air-powered 16 foot tall spider puppet is made by Tim Davies. Wired.co.uk has more technical details about the structure and how it operates. (I think this information must come from the artist’s site, but it is down at the moment).
Kate Bush’s shadow puppet animation
Kate Bush’s cool shadow puppet animation, Eider Falls at Lake Tahoe, was made to accompany a segment of the track Lake Tahoe on her new album 50 Words For Snow. In a note about the animation on her site she credits Robert Allsopp for the beautiful puppets.
4th National Australian Puppetry & Animatronics Summit
If you have a paper, workshop, or performance that you would like to present at the 4th National Puppetry and Animatronics Summit in Australia, please submit your proposal to the Summit Steering Committee by 31 January 2012.
The summit will be held in Melbourne, 5 – 8 July, 2012, and hosted by the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne.
Building on the best experiences of the previous Summits, the 4th Summit will provide a stimulating and provocative program of workshops, masterclasses, and forums for policy discussions and debates that celebrate the arts of puppetry and animatronics.
An exciting new feature of the 4th Summit is a ten day performance project masterclass lead by an international guest artist which culminates in a presentation at the opening of the Summit. There will also be a film program and a Summit Club where puppeteers can perform experimental items and works-in-progress.
I’ve been to the previous summits in Melbourne 2002, Hobart 2006, and Perth 2008 and found them very worthwhile, so it’s good to know there is another one coming up.
A clean studio to start the year!
I’ve spent some days giving my studio a huge clean-up, including moving and cleaning shelving, washing down the walls, and some reorganising. It took a lot of effort but it feels worthwhile. Apart from anything else, my work often generates a lot of dust and particles that settle everywhere, and although I use safety gear I worry a little about the health risk.
There seems to be so much surface space, though I know it won’t last for long!
Tarrengower Puppetfest
The inaugural Tarrengower Puppetfest is coming up quickly! It takes place in the central Victorian town of Maldon on 10 -12 March 2012. The relaxed rural setting, where people can easily walk between performance venues, cafe’s and eating places, should be a drawcard as it was at the One Van Puppet Festival, which used to be held in Blackheath in the Blue Mountains.
The artistic director, Richard Hart from Dream Puppets, has put together a great program, and there are more performances yet to be included, including a puppet slam. Dream Puppets also puts together the Oz Puppetry Email Newsletter which is a good way of keeping up to to date with Australian puppetry news, and the festival.
Puppet Heap’s new hand puppets
Puppet Heap have recently released a series of cool hand puppets that are available individually through Amazon. I really like their stylised caricature design and aesthetic, a breath of fresh air amid the plush and felt. I also like this devil which will be in their next upcoming series:
Some thoughts on 3D printing and the arts
If you want to blow your mind, take a journey into the revolutionary realm of 3D printing. Rapid prototyping has been around for about 20 years, but 3D printing seems now to be quickly becoming a viable manufacturing process for a wide range of materials and objects. There are lots of examples, of which the following are only a small selection:
- Reproduce yourself with a 3D printer – the reporter’s head is scanned and printed as a small model. The printers he shows can print in paper, resin and plastic.
- bioprinting ears, skin, cartilege, tissue, bone, organs, teeth, ultrasound images
- chocolate, sugar and other food
- glass, ceramic, foam, concrete, plaster, wood
- metals, silver, titanium
- tools, shoes, musical instruments. models (what about guns – scary thought!)
- souvenirs of yourself
- clones – the use of this for replica bridal dolls cracks me up!
- art, puppets
- Solar sinter project – printing sand into glass in the desert by Markus Kayser
Like other disruptive technology, 3D printing looks as if it will follow the path of offering the ability to decentralize and customise, and to make unique things cost effectively.
It’s interesting to consider what impact this is already having and going to have on artists and how they make things, as it becomes mainstream. Imagine, we can digitally sculpt or scan something in 3D (or photograph it, send the photos to somewhere like Photofly to get them stitched into a 3D scan), then send the files to a fabricator or perhaps even our own 3D printer , and there it is. There is the obvious debate between new and old, manufactured and handmade, and whether quality will be enhanced or compromised. Most likely 3D printing will become an additional useful tool for some processes, components and items, and competency in these technologies will become more expected in the arts industry. And, entirely handmade is likely to become rarer but more valuable.
