Solipsist is an experimental short film directed by LA-based Andrew Thomas Huang. It is visually stunning and reminds me of strange otherworldly art by Mœbius and Luigi Serafini, complete with creatures similar to but distinct from bioluminescent fish (of a craftier sort), alien folk costumes and unfathomnable human interactions. Watch it:
It won the Special Jury Prize for Experimental Short at SLAMDANCE 2012. The dancers, costume designers, puppet makers and masters, avant-guard make-up artists and CGI artists have created something quite astounding under Huang's direction. The combination of techniques is also used to great effect. The making of is also quite something:
Whichever of the many December holidays, when days in the Northern Hemisphere grow short and nights are long, which you may celebrate, I hope it's a good one.
These are Mummers in St Johns, Newfoundland and Labrador:
Mummering is a Christmastime tradition in Newfoundland and Labrador, which settlers brought from England at some point. I involves, in various proportions, costumed house visits (sometimes in drag), singing, performance, recitation, challenging hosts to guess identities, and of course, last but not least, drinking.
Not just art and science, let's add some balloons today! Like superheroes whose power is to create immense, inflated, jellyfish creatures, today I bring you not one, but two sculptors-of-unexpected-media: the balloon.
Jason Hackenwerth lives and works in NYC, creating ephemeral inflated sculptures evocative of botany or biology, or just plain sexuality, their eventual deflation mirroring life's transience too. The wiggling, jiggling, wearable sculptures are pretty hilarious.
Meanwhile, in Chicago, artist Willy Chyr ties his balloon sculptures a little more literally to anatomy, perhaps because he is a physicist by training (or more specifically physicist-economist-circus worker-sculptor). He writes that he is inspired by nature, rather than mimicking it - everything from bioluminescence to consciousness. Consider the comb jelly, installed in the Biological Sciences Learning Center, Chicago, IL, April-May 2009: His website states:
It was inspired by the ctenophore, or comb jelly - a small marine animal characterized by having eight rows of cilia along its body, which scatter light to create a moving rainbow pattern.
The Comb Jelly consists of over 500 balloons, 81 LEDs, and took over 30 hours to build.
Neuroplastic Dreams is a bit more poetic, evoking the "neuron forest".
Balluminescence - Lights, Balloons, Jellyfish! engaged the audience in making balloon jellyfish at Science Chicago's Labfest. I love the idea of marrying art and science, balloons and LEDs and involving the public! Now that's amazing job he's invented for himself.
