{"id":100,"date":"2005-05-05T09:48:46","date_gmt":"2005-05-05T09:48:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spiritsdancing.com\/sdblog\/?p=100"},"modified":"2015-07-26T15:51:50","modified_gmt":"2015-07-26T04:51:50","slug":"the-making-of-the-expo-giant-platypus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spiritsdancing.com\/sdblog\/2005\/05\/05\/the-making-of-the-expo-giant-platypus\/","title":{"rendered":"The Making of the EXPO Giant Platypus"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You might have seen pictures in the news of the Prime Minister and his wife <a href=\"http:\/\/tinypic.com\/4ut4au\">dwarfed<\/a> by a giant platypus, on the occasion of the opening of the Australian Pavilion at the World Expo in Aichi, Japan a couple of weeks ago.  It was made by a <a href=\"http:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20061008085114\/http:\/\/www.australia.or.jp\/english\/seifu\/pressreleases\/?pid=TK07\/2004\">team<\/a> assembled by the Melbourne production company, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thinkots.com\/\">think!OTS<\/a>, and there are some images of the platypus there, if you check their portfolios.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.spiritsdancing.com\/blog\/expox.jpg\" alt=\"Expox\" title=\"Expox\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Yesterday I was delighted to also find photos of the making of the platypus exhibit at <a href=\"http:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20130120185306\/http:\/\/www.expo2005.com.au\/default.asp\">Australia at Aichi World Expo 2005<\/a> in their <a href=\"http:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20060906222107\/http:\/\/www.expo2005.com.au:80\/slideshow.asp?gID=1\">Pavilion Photo Gallery<\/a>. Starting with an <a href=\"http:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20060823190841\/http:\/\/expo2005.com.au\/picture.asp?pID=15\">artist&#8217;s impression<\/a>, they move on to show how the over-all shape was <a href=\"http:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20060822053952\/http:\/\/expo2005.com.au\/picture.asp?pID=40\">constructed out of foam<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20060823190555\/http:\/\/expo2005.com.au\/picture.asp?pID=41\">filled with plaster<\/a>, coated with concrete and <a href=\"http:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20060823190936\/http:\/\/expo2005.com.au\/picture.asp?pID=42\">covered<\/a> with leather and soft fur. It&#8217;s not clear to me from that description how they end up with <a href=\"http:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20060822044246\/http:\/\/expo2005.com.au\/picture.asp?pID=57\">hollow sections<\/a>, but I&#8217;m guessing that its the concrete layer that forms the shell. The platypus measures about 11 metres.Here are a few other picture links:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20060825080333\/http:\/\/expo2005.com.au\/picture.asp?pID=217\">&#8216;Our Mary&#8217; <\/a>and Prince Frederick with the platypus<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20060825080258\/http:\/\/expo2005.com.au\/picture.asp?pID=216\">&#8216;Our Mary&#8217; sits on its tail<\/a><br \/>\nMr and Mrs Howard with the platypus: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theage.com.au\/ffximage\/2005\/04\/21\/PLATYPUS_wideweb__430x218.jpg\">1<\/a>,<a href=\"http:\/\/www.smh.com.au\/ffximage\/2005\/04\/21\/howard_platypus_wideweb__430x286.jpg\">2<\/a> (both photos by Penny Bradfield)<br \/>\n<u>Update:<\/u> Platy-cam! (not available anymore)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You might have seen pictures in the news of the Prime Minister and his wife dwarfed by a giant platypus, on the occasion of the opening of the Australian Pavilion at the World Expo in Aichi, Japan a couple of weeks ago. It was made by a team assembled by the Melbourne production company, think!OTS, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[20,3,10,9],"tags":[239,1371,253,254,252],"class_list":["post-100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-make","category-news","category-sculpture","category-visual-art","tag-japan","tag-make","tag-platypus","tag-webcam","tag-world-expo"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paZhI-1C","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritsdancing.com\/sdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritsdancing.com\/sdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritsdancing.com\/sdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritsdancing.com\/sdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritsdancing.com\/sdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/spiritsdancing.com\/sdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3185,"href":"https:\/\/spiritsdancing.com\/sdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions\/3185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritsdancing.com\/sdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritsdancing.com\/sdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritsdancing.com\/sdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}