this is a private blog for my design students and assorted other survivors. Tro blemakers all
this is a private blog for my design students and assorted other survivors. Tro blemakers all.
this is a private blog for my design students and assorted other survivors. Tro blemakers all.
this is a private blog for my design students and assorted other survivors. Tro blemakers all.

Tuesday, May 04, 2010

courtesy de le féeriquely brilliant Ms.Taline





Perhaps one of the last things made by hand, (ok, maybe I'm being a trifle dramatic here) but these works definitely required a pre-digital mind, an imagination as it were.

Homo Hablis, the first tool user, required both invention and adventure, things were made by hand and over time.

These artists had both the curiosity and the independence of mind to shape the work by hand, and that shows all the way through.

Especially in the way that the work doesn't look like everything else.

So much we do today is virtually indistinguishable from all else, and it just appears utterly familiar. A numbing visual homogeneity, featurelessly ubiquitous, a faux hip, strategically outré sameness.

Commonality is fine for sheep in a meadow, or bishops at sea, but don't you think your work should at least appear to be as different as the artists which deign to made it ?

In today's instant digital world we seem to have somehow lost the inclination to and the joy of manually creating , nor do we any longer appear to have the patience to do things by hand, or evidently, the skills to.

Handmade objects seem kinda sentimental, fetishistic and clumsy, as if amateurish and unreliable.......

It's remarkable really that the last video entry - Peter Gabriel's visionary "Sledgehammer" video, which is from 1986, still shines as brightly today as it did upon its release. Our poor, assailed species (homo ineptus, I made that bit up) descending deeper into a sticky mass brand idolatry - rife with instant/disposable personality or brand cults, and subject to the inexorable merging of the synthetic/digital life-substitutes like twitter, farcebook, pornorama etc.

Will we forget how to make things ourselves ?, or slightly more sinister - will we lose the desire to?

I mean, dudes, do you think there's such an overwhelming distinction between your umbilical reliance/attachment to your texting devices, than between Neo's symbiotically hardwired connection to the unknown Matrix ?

You can giggle all you want, but it's not that much of a literary absurdity really, there are far too many parallels to be drawn to discount the idea out of hand.

Next time you twitter the entire known universe detailing your absurdly banal daily events, ask yourself this - how different is it really from that - to the grotesque imaginarium of Neo and his band of digital monkeys ?

This summer, do something actually radical, use your hands, make a birdhouse, and just maybe you'll save your soul.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

this is sooo true...

Alienrace said...

Stop motion animation is becoming more of a niche tool rather than the go-to solution. I'd say that having the alternative of CGI is what allowed us to appreciate all the heart that goes into this kind of animation. It's much more valuable now than it used to be.

Tom, I suggest you check out Youth in Revolt. It has a few pretty good stop motion sequences. Also, despite being a lameo mock-intie film, it has a pretty strong plot (mainly because it's based on a book). It's right up your alley.

molly said...

A-MEN!