Calder's Circus
Alexander Calder... his inventions hang in art museums and babies' cribs all around the world. But before he created the Mobile, he had his own circus. He's apparently always been fascinated with automatons, something closely related to our fascination for puppets and objects that seem to move of their own accord. The link above will take you to a YouTube page with all 4 segments of a documentary about his automated circus. Incredibly clever stuff! And the circus connection puts it in close proximity to films by early stopmotion pioneers like Trnka.
To bring this up to date, here's a more recent blast of automania: Theo Jansen's walking kinetic sculptures. Many thanks to Shelley Noble for digging all this great stuff up from the morass of the web and tipping me off to it.
Movin' movin' movin' yeah......
18 comments:
wow, those kinetic sculptures are amazing!
hey man, my name is jason daniels, i emailed your other site...darkstrider...but i didn't receive a response...guessing its due to the server problems. Anyway, i am also a uk animator/artist and i have just my own website: www.jasedaniels.com. i woundered if you would mind if i put a link to your sites, theres some great info on them and i really like your work. Feel free to check out my site. catch ya later.
jase
Hey Jase,
Sure, feel free to link up. Took a look at your site... some pretty impressive drawings, though the animations don't seem to be working. The email function at my Darkstrider site seems to be entirely arbitrary... works for some, not for others.
thanks man, i shall link you as soon as i get a min. Did you mean not working technically...or artistically? just had a look at my site and i think they are up and running. Good luck with your current project...very interested to see how it progresses.
catch ya later.
jase
Thanks, man, I read further that Jensen's struts are based on natural creation's. That may explain why the movement registers for many as so true to life.
The Calder Circus is so charming to me. One artist, creating a world with their talent and having people delight in it.
Thanks for all the great links, Mike (?)
I've been on the wiki's automata external links all day! Husband Paul and I love love love automata and try to make they and pop-ups out of paper all the time.
Jase, I couldn't get any of the clips to play at all... they weren't loading or something. Maybe a direct link to them on YouTube would be nice... other people are probably having the same problem. Hey, it's kind of weird you contacted me right when you did.... over at the message board at StopMotionAnimation.com (direct link to thread) we've been having a conversation about William Burroughs... I'm guessing you're a fan?
Shellster, thank ME for the links? No no... thank YOU!!! I kinda feel like a copycat here, blogging stuff you found and shared with me! That circus doco makes me want to start bending coathangar wires and try to make stuff ,ove around like that! Don't think I'll try to make any of the big beach walkers though. On second thought, maybe I'll stick to making stopmo puppets.
blimey. thanks for the tip off...i shall make a direct link to my films and hopefully that will sort it all out. William Burroughs is kinda interesting, generally smack heads irritate me but i think his work has genuine value. guessing that sounds a bit harsh.
anyway, thanks again, i'll try and fix my youtube thingy and hopefully it will work.
later.
jase
Heh, yeah.... opinions about Burroughs usually are pretty harsh.
I found your films on YouTube.... wow, really good stuff! Here's a link for anyone who's interested (Shelley, you need not apply!): user=jason2019.
I'll link to your site when I get a chance.
Great to see a new post over at the Darkstrider.net.
Here is my plea to say don't abandon that pillar of the stop motion community. I know it's sooo much easier to blog with the off the shelf blogware, but don't give up on that site. Your google ranking is pretty amazing.
Mark, did you see what I did over there just last night (probably as you were writing this?) It's now sort of a mirror of this blog. Kind of weird I know.... same content on two different sites, but by the same token I don't want to abandon this blog now that I've established it. I've woven a tangled web, and now I just have to keep going with it.
thanks for your comments and in advance for the links. I agree...keep going with darkstrider cos its a wicked site filled with excelent information...really impressive work man.
catch ya later.
jase
That works - Yes I missed the RSS feed.
Looks good. I wondered how hard it would be to set up the blog code on your own site. Probably alot of server side stuff to code. The RSS feed at least is a start.
Of course I agree with everyone, keep Darkstrider alive :) Just saw Lio's post at SMA, congrats on the book mention, that rocks!!
I know you'll probably punch me for saying this now that you've that sort of feed, but you can publish a blogger blog via ftp.
There were some instructions on the blogger help I think...anyway, how many sites are you woking on?! Who are you? Bill freakin' Gates?! Come on, give it a break, go play some beach volleyball! (?)
See ya guys
I saw 'em, so what. Digital Mutilation looks like Sven's split-frame experiments crossed with Bowie's 1994 video with hanging cow carcases. Jase obvi has stop mo chops, his Dog Head camera moves inside the set are inspiring. What I'm going for actually.
Off to catch up on all the Darkstrider.net hubbub.
Good to see that you are incrementally getting DarkStrider.net up & running after many months of being shut-out. You can still have this Blogger template setup but perhaps integrated within Darkstrider site and so you need only one URL .... more seamless. I have no knowledge of RSS feeds but I thought that was just for headlines. Quick-O-Matic Googlizing and this popped up (i have not read it)....
Integrating Blogger Into Your Website
http://www.wolf-howl.com/seo/integrating-blogger-into-your-website-part-i
I am sure more info online about this. I am no webmastering expert and I don't use a template blog. I do it myself, via wysiwyg html editor and some manual editing. Of course, if I had a blogging format where people could directly reply to blog/news items, then I might consider one of those template blogging setups .... but then .... I would be online even more and we know how internet can suck you all in and just eat-up many hours, daily, weekly, monthly ... ;)
-LIO
Hey Mike,
Do you notice that the attic looks exactly the same as in Slow Bob and the Lower Dimension? I wonder if there's a connection?
Marc
Post--Post--Post--Post!
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