Tag / shadow puppetry

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  • Circus-y disco e-luminated book

    Quite a long title for a tiny weeny book. This one was rather wonderful to make, and was programmed using a simple Arduino blinky pattern and the teeny-weeny-ATtiny. (so teeeeeeny) Here is the process: All the layers putting the pages together The lighting The control -including wonderful paper battery holder curtsy of Natalie Freed and…

  • San Francisco Center for the Book

    We held our second e-luminated book workshop at the SFCB this weekend. It was a really lovely and creative group -they experimented with light and switches and made some really beautiful tunnel books in a very short time. We’ll be teaching the same class again in the new year, and will also be teaching a…

  • What’s in the box?

    Oh, you know, folk climbing mountains and holding up a rainbows in a storm of electrostatic discharge. Same old.* *hand made clamshell box with paper cuts, LED lighting, and animated circuitry.

  • Coyote Peep Show

    Oh look. I made a peep show. It is a coyote peep show where shadows of wolves howl at shadows of wolves with boobs. peep through the eye of the eye hooooooooooooooo wwwwwwwwwwww lllllllllllllllllllllllllll This is another prototype for my final project for the bookbinding class I am taking. And I am terribly excited, because…

  • Shadowy tunnel(ish)

    After tinkering with *f l a t* images I realize I am actually barking up the wrong tree, or at least, the wrong side of the tree. My aim is to create a hand-held animated shadow puppet theatre, and this needs to have depth as well as interaction. So, here is my next iteration in…

  • Stick Stock

    Waaaaaaay back in June 2012 I was part of a wonderful collaboration. It was for a performance called Through the Nostrils. It went something like: folk meets punk, meets puppetry, meets a host of weird and wonderful stories, meets a 20 piece community choir, and we all have a big-cinematic-gig at the Cube, Bristol. (Link to…

  • *Foundation folds in wolves and woods

    I’ve been making some pop-up prototypes. Pop-up engineering has the perfect clever-brain to maker-brain ratio (CB:MB), and it’s illustrating stories with paper, which adds a whole other dimension into the big-amazing-paper-pop-up-pot. Thus far I have LOVED the process. Here are some images from a book I made called “Pop-up Papper (oops!) Mechanics *Foundation folds in…

  • Oriya Puppetry

    Orissa has a history of puppetry, which goes back a few hundred years. As is the story with many of the artforms I have encountered in India, there are few groups still practicing. I went to visit one of these troupes in central Orissa. The group are led by local academic Gouranga Dash. Gouranga tells…

  • Shadows Under the Banyan Tree

    Shortly after plonking my backpack on the sofa and gulping my sweet tea, Pulavar and his son informed me of their gig in Fort Kochi. They had been booked to perform an abridged Ramayana that evening. I was quite relieved to peel myself out of the car after 8 hours wedged in between a troupe…

  • Happy New Year from India!

    HAPPY 2013 everyone! Just a quick post before I head further south to start the long anticipated residency in Shoranur. I am slowly getting used to the wonderfully full-of-colours-busy-topsy-turvy lifestyle in India. I arrived in Kolkata a week ago, and was met by my wonderful host Georgie from Sound Travels. I have spent most of…

  • Oedipus in Boots

    I made film for Oedipus in Boots, the Wardrobe Theatre’s “new mother loving panto”. I would’ve liked to have been more involved, but alas, time would not permit, so I designed the opening credits. It was a short sequence that follows Oedipus the cat’s journey along the river whilst (James Bond style) crediting the actors.…

  • Indian Shadow Puppetry

    At the start of next year I will go on a research trip to to India. I will carry out research into the history and cultural context of shadow puppetry and crafts in a number of places in India. [image: Ramachandra Pulvar] This will include spending 3 weeks with puppeteer Ramachandra Pulvar in Kerala. Pulvar is from a…

  • Folk in Krakow

    I recently attended the International Illustration Research Symposium in Krakow. The symposium is in it’s third year and the focus this time was The Function of Folk (the first year was all about shadow plays, how did I miss that?!). Above is Lotte (who we met at the conference, she was talking about her work),…

  • Watershed Day of the Dead Workshop

    Recently I worked with Watershed’s producer Hannah Higginson, and Fresh Flix to develop workshops for their engagement programme. I facilitated a Day of the Dead shadow-puppet-stop-motion-animation workshop, held after a screening of Corpse Bride. The workshop was a lot of fun! There were about 20 creative small people between the age of 4 and 12, and also a great team…

  • Spoon-Fed

    This months Spoon-Fed (a wonderful Bristol based micro-funding event) was full of creative ideas, and inventive ways of communicating those creative ideas. The night goes something like this: we all pay a fiver and get some soup and bread (delicious); 8 artists present a project idea (interesting); everyone votes the project they want to fund (democratic); the artist with…

  • Experiments in shadow

    Last week I made some shadow books. They kind of work as a little tiny hand-held miniature shadow screens. I like. They are quite funny -a bit like those flip-books you get where you can swap body parts. I’m thinking of making longer ones and adding story to see what happens. I have also been geeking-out…

  • Shadow-puppetry-in-a-cupboard

    I exhibited a mini-shadow-puppet-show at Hamilton House last week -part of the Bristol Biennial. This piece is a work-in-progress. I am exploring ways of making illustration interactive and performative. (i.e. involving the “reader” to make/change/be part of the visual storytelling). This could be via live animation, like a 3d-pop-up book, or a theatre piece in…

  • Blue Puppet Peter

    Our first run of improvised shadow puppetry hosted by the Blue-Blue Peter team Making in the White Bear pub (downstairs from the Wardrobe Theatre)

  • Rusty Squid Workshop

    I have been intrigued, fascinated, and excited by the work of local interactive tech group “RustySquid“. The Squids use digital technology to create rather marvellous responsive puppetry  -they create work that responds to its environment (an example of this is a puppet whose heart beats faster when it gets closer to a human). The Squids set up…