In the alien world of Raymond Lemstra everyone wears masks, and yet, no one does. Here we have strange artifacts, the masks of some long forgotten Martian tribe or, perhaps, another dimension altogether. They have life to them, though, these bizarre visages, as if they were not fashioned from wood but were, instead, impressions of actual faces, like death masks. Indeed, his figures reinforce this feeling, their faces cuboid and frozen. One gets the feeling that the people underneath this ornamental headgear aren’t obscuring their features or hiding their identities, but merely accentuating them.
A backstage peep at photographer Tim Walker’s phenomenal ‘Mechanical Dolls‘ editorial for the October 2011 edition of Vogue Italia, featuring models Audrey Marnay & Kirsi Pyrhonen. Brilliantly styled by Jacob K. — a truly breathtaking amalgam of outmoded automata and puppetry, paired with delicate vintage French, British and Japanese garments. Make-up by Val Garland, hair by Malcolm Edwards.
Photo by Tim Walker from the “Mechanical Dolls” editorial, Vogue Italia, 2011.
You can thank David Lewandowski (lead animator on TRON: Legacy) for the nightmare juice. The Jean Jacques Perrey music makes it extra disturbing, somehow.
One of the more unique looking, and easily one of the most uniquesoundingmusical instruments ever invented, Hans Reichel’s daxophone is sure to put some spring in your step and some giggles in your face this fine morning:
A bowed musical instrument that falls into the category of “friction idiophones“, the daxophone consists of a long, thin wooden blade notched into a wooden block containing one or more contact (piezo) mics, often attached to a tripod. In addition to being bowed, daxophones can be plucked or struck, conducting sounds the same way “a struck ruler halfway off a table does”, with each vibration moving through a “tongue” of wood into the instrument’s wood block base, which acts as a resonator for the contact mics contained inside.
Depending on the shape and grain of each wooden tongue, and how they are manipulated, all manner of uncanny (and often hilarious) warbling, moaning, grumbling, yodeling, spluttering, rasping, growling, yowling sounds can be coaxed from these oddly human-sounding pieces of wood. (The daxophone’s name comes from the use of a stopper block of wood called the “dax”, which is fretted on one side to produce fixed pitches, while the other side is curved and smooth, allowing a performer to shift more fluidly from one note into the next.)
A variety of daxophone tongues. (Via oddmusic.com.)
Generously, Reichel offers extensive downloadable plans for his invention on his website so that other woodworkers can create daxophones of their very own.
Visit oddmusic.com to find out more about this, and countless other experimental instruments and musicians. Also worth checking out:
“Puppets always have to try to be alive. It’s their kind of Ur-Story on stage– that desperation to live.” ~Adrian Kohler
“[...] It only lives because you make it. An actor struggles to die onstage, but a puppet has to struggle to live, and in a way, that’s a metaphor for life.” ~Basil Jones
In 1981, partners Basil Jones and Adrian Kohler co-founded the Handspring Puppet Company in Cape Town, South Africa, with two other graduates of the Michaelis School of Fine Art. Thirty years later, the two of them continue to run the company, staging theatrical collaborations in theaters worldwide with a cadre of downright empathic puppeteers.
The concerted group effort that goes into designing, building and performing these puppets ensures that they do live. In fact, the illusion is so complete at times, it would be almost frightening, were the creatures not presented so lovingly.
The Handspring Puppet Co.’s inspiring TED talk brings “the emotional complexity of animals to the stage with their life-size puppets.” Their horse, in particular, is a miracle of engineering, art, and soulful expression.
The company’s latest production, War Horse, opened in New York at Lincoln Center last week. Are any of our New York readers going to go see it? Please, by all means, report back in comments!
Here’s a widely unknown, but interesting example of intercultural influence exchange: Hans Bellmer can be easily called the godfather of Japan’s thriving puppet scene. In fact, the majority of currently active Japanese doll designers graduated from the famous Ecole de Simon. Its founder, Yotsuya Simon, was the originator of the now thriving dollmaking scene.
In 1965, a young artist nicknamed Simon (because of his love for jazz, especially Nina Simone) learned about surrealism and avant-garde theater, which would influence him for the rest of his life. Soon after, he became a member of Jokyo Gekijo (Situation Theatre), which was considered one of the most progressive art movements in Japan at that time. Simultaneously, fascinated by Bellmer, Simon began to create his own ball-jointed dolls.
His most famous works – the Narcissisme and Pygmalionisme series – appear to be studies on the ambiguities of the human body. The life-like, waifish, pale bodies, surgically opened and exposed to the spectator’s eye, bear a mark of complete sadness, leaving the observer with a feeling of acute unease. One might raise the subject of ambivalent eroticism here: it’s remarkable that one of Yotsuya’s past exhibitions was named Dolls of Innocence.
The Klaxons and director Saam Farahmand would like you to reconsider the benefits and implications of polyamory, and they’re using the music video format to do so. Or maybe they’re just trying to make you squirm. Whatever the case, peep this video for “Twin Flames” – it’s like soft-core porn for the Cronenberg generation. The only thing missing? Tentacles.
Conceived and animated by Cook, with music by Martín Capella, the short film, Deuce, “portrays an awkward encounter between a man and a woman that triggers their individual fantasies.” As usual, Cook succeeds in presenting a putrescent sensuality that’s simultaneously off-putting and mesmerizing.
