Murphy's Show will go on forever

The Show Must Go OFF!!! plus pictures

the show was awesome, i had a great time. everyone i talked to was so impressed by the show, so good job everybody, its been awesome

heres some pics from the show my friends took....

....nevermind, theyre not uploading, work in progress

I suck!

You would be upset too if you were me!

Ouch, it hurts!

WHen they said "break a leg" I thought they were kiddin'

leg pics

You talking to me?

Thanks a million to Rob for sharing his creative and simple solution which translates into great magic.

What is Yoda thinking?

His microbrain just let's it be, in true wizard fashion. I look forward to the next evolutionary step.

new york pics

these are the favs of my trip to ny. starting with Rona Pondick, sculptor who uses 3-d printing to scale up and down her body parts to then cast in steel.

Tony Oursler- sculptor/video artist using plaster to create bulbous forms and then projecting video on them to bring them to life.

Inka Essenhigh- Don't know a whole lot except she went to SVA and is a damn good painter.

Tara donovan- Sculptor most commonly using multiples of objects, this one's a little extreme. You think you're in the clouds, but with a closer look realize you are actually being confronted by an army of translucent solo cups. This was about half the size of a basketball court.

Feel the Force...

The little green man will be here tomorrow (Tusday 28) accompanied by Master Rob. Make sure you are here bright and early to take advantage of his animatronic wisdom.

Snake Charm

This is a Basic Stamp controlled robot snake created by Dr. Gavin Miller in 1999. Click on the picture to see it move.
He is Principal Scientist at Adobe Systems Incorporated, but does this in his own time. He has been creating this fabulous snakes since the early 90's! He takes his inspiration directly from the critters themselves and explores different types of locomotion and behaviour as well as use of materials and mechanical solutions which are fascinating to explore.
I also enjoy his sense of humor, as in this photo:
which is a clear reference to an icon of the 80's, Nastassja Kinski, photographed by no other than Richard Avedon.

One can easily understand his love of snakes

Yoda and its master

Rob Hamersma designed this talking Yoda that you can see in action by clicking on his image. We might have a chance to see it in class right after Spring Break since some of you are out this week. He was a student at the Intelligent Machines Design Lab and you should check out his class project, called Micro-Controlled High-tech Independent Putter! mCHIP for short. It is very impressive. I not only like the end result which is very successful but I particularly like the very detailed process documentation from conception to execution. Way to go!
And, no, he is not a web designer :-)

I'm watching yo!

"To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk." - Edison

Let me get my bearings and you will see what I can do..boink, boink

Suckyphammmoot

The trunk of the suckiphammmoot about to snort some tasty vibrating furry balls!

Puppet Tree

Links to the sources and some examples

This is a quick collage of images that reference the 2 parameters we talked about in class: ratio of performer to object (1:many/many:1) and distance from performer to object. An good idea would be to position each image in both parameters as appropiate, except it is quite tricky or else it would need a lot of space to diagram correctly. In any case that most important part is to understand and explain where all this forms fit and how they relate. Some forms of puppetry belong in different categories simultaneously. How or where do your characters fit in this tree?

The power of limits

1.618 033 988 749 894 848 204 586 834 366...

The purpose of the Experimental Performance Hybrid that you are about to embark upon is to discover and respond emotionally, reflectively, creatively and imaginatively to your own ideas and those of others. There is no better way I can think of to do that than to accept the fact that everything that exists does because there is an underlying structure that supports and/or generates it.
We might no be used to work collaboratively as artists because we have been inclined to think that creativity is a purely personal endeavor. But what we are looking to achieve is synergy, as described by Buckminster Fuller

Synergy or synergism most often refers to the phenomenon of two or more discrete influences or agents acting in common to create an effect which is greater than the sum of the effects each is able to create independently.

The opposite of synergy is antagonism, the phenomenon where two agents in combination have an overall effect which is less than the sum of their individual effects.

So let's try to approach the assignment with a fresh vision and translate that vision into design for performance. Examine Image, Movement, Gesture, Spatial Relationship, Uses of Time, Shape, Repetition, Space and Action. Create a performance born of your own ideas, concerns, feelings, and motivations. And unleash the power of limits.

Xtreme Puppetry

Who controls who?

The rise of the machines. Arthur Elsenaar & Remko Scha work towards the complete automation of art.

The muscle machine

Take a look at the work of Stelarc .
Ping-Body

This performance artist uses the net as the interface to his own body. Who said our little Symet was hard? He subverts the notion of control by letting an avatar take over the human body and thus escape from its cybercage.

Hybrid Art

The strange sculptures of Hubert Duprat

When the mason uses bricks to construct the narrow flue of a factory chimney, he stands in the middle of his turret, and gradually lays new courses by revolving on his own axis. The caddis worm does the very same thing.

Plato, Timaeus

Bring your main processor

We will start work on the main performance project. For this you must bring concepts, issues and ideas to discuss and brainstorm around. Think about important questions, like: What is this stuff for? What value does it add to our lives? What are the issues most important to you?. If you were a poet and had to say the very last words of your life, what would you say?

"It is still not enough for language to have clarity and content ... it must also have a goal and an imperative. Otherwise from language we descend to chatter, from chatter to babble and from babble to confusion."

Rene Daumal