The online home of Bryce Tugwell, artist, designer and developer. Fuse Studios is a place to showcase my personal interests, artistic explorations and professional creative pursuitsMore-->
Friday, August 24, 2007
Street Of Crocodiles - Brothers Quay
From Screenonline: http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/498256/index.htmlby Ewa Mazierska "Stephen and Timothy Quay, identical twins, were born in Norristown, near Philadelphia, in 1947. After graduating in 1969 from the Philadelphia College of Art, where they studied illustration and graphics, they won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art, London. At the School of Film and Television they made their first short films (mostly lost), and met fellow student Keith Griffiths, who first collaborated with them on Nocturna Artificialia (1979), funded by the BFI Production Board. Working together as Koninck Studios, with Griffiths producing, the Quays have maintained a steady output of surreal and fastidious puppet animation films, supplemented by design work for opera, theatre and ballet. To help finance their avant-garde projects they have also worked on TV commercials, channel identification footage, and numerous music videos, including the Stille Nacht series, and, less characteristically, Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer.
The Quays are renowned for their craftsmanlike methods and their unusual sources of inspiration. Apart from their puppets, which typically look like old dolls abused by many generations of children, they construct their own sets, arrange the lighting, and operate the cameras. The films draw heavily on twentieth-century European visual and literary culture, especially the surrealist and expressionist traditions represented by the Polish writer Bruno Schulz, the painter Max Ernst, and their fellow director of puppet films, the Czech Jan Svankmajer. As with Svankmajer, the Quays' cinema is short on conventional narrative but long on enigmatic visuals; music usually plays a major part in creating a bizarre, sinister atmosphere.
The world invented by the Quays appears frozen in time, covered with dust and cobwebs, full of mirrors and strange machinery - a world stored in a locked room or glass cabinet that nobody has accessed for decades. The colour scheme often suggests the hues of old photographs: sepias, browns, and dirty yellows predominate. Nocturna Artificialia, describing the cataleptic hero's adventures when he leaves his room for the city, immediately established their individual technique and propensity for dream narratives. Subsequent films in the early 1980s, made for the Arts Council or Channel 4, paid specific homage to the team's European influences, including the Punch and Judy tradition, the artistic vortex of 1920s Paris, Svankmajer, the Czech composer Janácek, and, in Ein Brudermord, the claustrophobic imagination of Franz Kafka.
The twenty-minute Street of Crocodiles (1986), their first film shot in 35mm, decisively lifted the Quays beyond the quasi-documentary orbit. The film is a homage to Bruno Schulz, one of whose novels bears the same title. The setting is a mythical land, somewhere in pre-Second World War provincial Poland, which operates like a living organism (Schulz in his work often compared a city to a living body). The population consists of people either half-dead or half-alive, with empty heads, who move in a circular, mechanical way, oblivious to anyone else's movements. The Quays suggest that this degraded land is stored in a deserted museum and activated by an old Kinetoscope machine - something that could be interpreted as a sign of their faith in the creative powers of cinema."
I just found this series of stories on NPR's Morning Edition website on Art and Science. I ran into the Story on Kendal Buster recently and looked up the whole series. Kendal was a professor and friend from the Corcoran School of Art when I was a student. I helped her with the construction of a couple of her pieces in the 1990's and it was interesting to hear about her work again. The whole series is worthwhile, some of the stories are better than others but each has at least a few good points of interest.
In the Series For Pianist, Music Unleashes Rainbows of Color April 18, 2005 · When pianist Laura Rosser performs, she hears more than sounds. She hears colors -- each note has its own associated hue. Rosser has a rare neurological condition called synesthesia. Stimulation of one sense produces the sensation of another.
Artist Known for Ephemera Creates Slate Landscape March 28, 2005 · Andy Goldsworthy, a sculptor best known for impermanent works in nature made of leaves, rocks and even ice, has created a permanent slate structure for the National Gallery of Art. To do so, he studied optics and physics to create a series of domes that should stand forever without any cement. Web Extra: See the Sculpture Get Built
Donald Knuth, Founding Artist of Computer Science March 14, 2005 · Donald Knuth is legendary in the computer science world for writing a series of must-have reference books called The Art of Computer Programming. Part cookbook, part textbook, part encyclopedia, these books are also considered by many to be technical and personal works of art.
Artist Captures Wonder of Natural Phenomena March 7, 2005 · Artists use their creativity to reveal the world in new and sometimes unexpected ways. Artist Ned Kahn's work focuses on the physical world. From the harmonies of randomness to the dynamics of Earth's crust, Kahn uses scientific principles to create art. Web Extra: Kahn's Work in Words, Photos
Music of the Human Heart May Hold Clues to Healing February 28, 2005 · In the 1960s and '70s, Milford Graves was a jazz drummer who played with New York's avant-garde. He's still a musician, but he spends a great deal of time exploring the relationship between music and the human heart. Some doctors think he's onto something. Web Extra: Graves Plays Jazz, Manipulates Heartbeats
Holy Evolution, Darwin! Comics Take On Science February 14, 2005 · Comic books have become a new frontier for the portrayal of scientific ideas and the drama of discovery. But they're also a battleground for the ongoing debate between evolutionary scientists and proponents of creationism. Web Extra: Read Excerpts of Science Comics
The Barrons: Forgotten Pioneers of Electronic Music February 7, 2005 · Before synthesizers and samplers, Bebe and Louis Barron created otherworldly electronic sounds. Web Extra: See Clips from Films the Barrons Scored
MIT-Trained Artist Blurs Technology and Art November 18, 2004 · An artist educated at MIT has a unique perspective on his trade. Using lasers, heart monitors and other technological gadgets, Christopher Janney explores the nature of creativity and origin of the soul.
Music Helps Physicians Heal Themselves November 15, 2004 · When they aren't seeing patients, many doctors moonlight as musicians. Doctors' orchestras exist in a handful of cities around the country. Many doctors say these groups help them unwind. Some think it makes them better physicians, too. Joel Rose of member station WHYY reports. Web Extra: Hear the Doctors' Orchestra Perform
Software Helps Singers Find Perfect Pitch November 8, 2004 · For those with less-than-perfect singing voices, technology offers help. A number of computer programs can correct pitch to make just about anyone sound in tune -- even NPR's Renee Montagne, who lends her voice to show how the software works. Web Extra: Hear Renee Montagne Sing Like Cher
Bringing the Lost World of Dinosaurs to Life November 1, 2004 · At the American Museum of Natural History, a lost world is taking shape. Artists, writers and scientists have joined forces to create the most up-to-date dinosaur show ever. NPR's Christopher Joyce reports. Web Extra: See Dino Displays in Progress
Exploring the Drama of Science, Faithfully October 25, 2004 · Many films and plays present a cartoon version of science bearing little resemblance to reality. Playwright Paul Mullin prefers to explain the facts to the audience, highlighting the human drama inherent in scientific discovery. NPR's Joe Palca reports. Web Extra: Photos of Mullin's Work on Stage
Manjul Bhargava: An Artist of Music and Math October 18, 2004 · Number theory expert Manjul Bhargava is also a master of Indian drumming. He sees close links between his two loves -- both connect seemingly random ideas to create beauty. Web Extra: Hear Bhargava Play the Tabla
From Microscopes to Large-Scale Sculpture October 11, 2004 · For sculptor Kendall Buster, there is no distinction between art and science. Trained as a microbiologist, she explores the forms and landscapes seen in a microscope lens through her giant sculptures. NPR's Neda Ulaby reports. Web Extra: Photos of Buster's Sculptures, Video of an Inspiration
In Evolution, a Taste for Beauty Has a Purpose October 4, 2004 · An appreciation for beauty may play a vital role in evolution. Female bowerbirds, for example, choose mates based on the aesthetics of their mating dance. Human behavior is more complex, but scientists say our love of beauty has also helped us survive. NPR's Christopher Joyce reports. Web Extra: Watch the Bowerbird's Seduction Dance
An Aside - A Moment of Nostalgia - a Longing for Futures Lost
You know, a long time ago, being crazy meant something. Nowadays, everybody's crazy. - Charles Manson to Diane Sawyer, ABC's Turning Point, March 9, 1994.
I don't know the people in this video, and yet they are like familiar ghosts - walking the halls of a past that is all too familiar, all too vivid still; it literally pains me to watch, and yet I can not look away. We rarely realize when a place or a moment will become enshrined, iconic in the myth we build, our imagined history, of ourselves, for ourselves.
Tonight I searched YouTube for such a place (time) in my own past - and found a video so eerily familiar that I might have as well found an idealized window into my own mind, my own (re-imagined) past.
I need only squint my eyes, blur these peoples faces slightly and 20 years fall away. The smell, the sound of the sea surrounds me, friends lost are with me briefly, again; and my futures seem to open ahead of me.
If only I knew then... There are a thousand things I would tell those friends. I would start with just how much I miss them.
Ted, Damon, Tom, Ben, Crystal, Josh, Anna, Serge, Margo, All of you at Mr Toots, all of you, I still think of you often. I miss you. I really do.
