Claymation

Nick never heard of the term up until I was out on a walk in Bristol and came across the the statutes where everyone, including adults, wanted to have their photo taken: Wallace and Gromit. I have seen a couple of the animations but thought it was for children mainly. It all started in the mind of Nick Park who started off with a character called Gromit as a cat. After university he returned to the idea again and changed it into the highly expressive dog we all know. Wallace existed in sketches already back in his university years as well. The trip to the Moon was inspired by some Nick knew who built a rocket in his basement. Gromit the scientists was born.

Animation is a long and laborious art form that luckily is still enjoyed by many kids. Claymation is an even longer method – for mean absolute test of patience – that needs even more attention and calculated steps that I imagined. For every move of any of the body parts an intervention is needed, the animator will have to adjust, clean and most of the times change bits of the characters. For Wallace a whole set of mouths was created to speed up the process of production and to be reused as many times as needed.

Today I wonder if people still appreciate and enjoy this once popular form of entertainment?

Overpainted Photographs

I have come across Gerhard Richter’s overpainted photographs only a few weeks ago, even to my amazement, as he is such a controversial artist. However better late then never and I am happy I did as I will remember them forever. Although having not seen them I, now, would very much like to.

Overpainted photographs? I asked myself, why would you do that? This was the first question my brain popped up with. I still don’t know the answer an I don’t mind because whatever his inspiration was and whatever he wants or not to communicate this new for of art (in my opinion) he invented is interesting to me on quite a few levels. I interpreted his collection of photographs ( from landscapes and family pictures to industrial ones) as a hypothetical but possible view upon reality. This already triggered the question of ‘what is reality really?’ which I think he wants you to ask yourself. He is known for pulling the viewer into the world of his works, he wants us to interact with his works and I like that, it moves it out of the static type art.

Whatever we all see in these overpainted photographs, I can only say I find them truly ingenious and simply beautiful. Just simply beautiful yet they are so carefully structured and layered. They are not decorated or corrected, I think they are created. They take me into a different world and bring me back again as the background always peaks through the colourful layers.

https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/art/overpainted-photographs

Hempcrete or the new way of building

For the last month I have been looking into this new way of building, that has so many benefits and is certainly sustainable, an area that I became interested in, in the last two years, yet I could barely find a few newspaper articles about some adventurous people who have actually build houses using hemp. Yes, hemp! That’s what I thought first as well, how can one do that? So here are a few facts about building with hemp.

It is a plant that grows very fast ( it is ready to use after 4 months) and naturally stores and absorbs CO2 up until the plant is burnt or recycled in the case of building material. Recently, it has been used as a building material due to it’s insulating properties that absorbs, retains and then releases water vapour making the building ‘breath’. This way the internal temperature is stabilised impacting on the air quality inside.

The plant ( more precisely the core or shiv ) is mixed with a lime-based binder ( this blew my mind) making panels out of them that are then installed into a frame ( mostly wooden) and used for building. This combination offers a perfect insulating, fire and decay resistant option for building new eco friendly and zero carbon footprint buildings. Even the Science Museum tested out this new method for its archival storage resulting in all hating and cooling devices for a year.

To me it sounds like a great new building method that would cut down on everyone’s energy and heating bills, providing a healthier space to live in, and for those who care about the ecological issues of our world, offering a ‘guilt’ free option and not to mention a more affordable housing system.

So hopefully this new ingenious method will be embraced in the near future and building will be done more consciously.

http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2014/sep/25/hemp-wood-fibre-construction-climate-change