20+ Knitters and Crochet Artists Stitch an Astonishing 3‑D Recreation of Picasso’s Guernica

in Art, Creativity, History | December 20th, 2019

Soft­ness is per­haps not the first qual­i­ty that springs to mind when one imag­ines recre­at­ing the chaos and anguish of Picasso’s Guer­ni­ca in a 3‑dimensional rep­re­sen­ta­tion.

Though how else to describe the pri­ma­ry medi­um of the urban knit­ting group Sul filo dell’arte?

More than 20 fiber artists worked for over a year, metic­u­lous­ly cro­chet­ing embroi­der­ing and knit­ting the most famil­iar ele­ments of the paint­ing as stand-alone fig­ures, to mark the eight­i­eth anniver­sary of the bomb­ing of the small Span­ish town depict­ed in the 1937 mas­ter­piece.

Stu­dents from the State Art School of the Roy­al Vil­la of Mon­za con­tributed the frame­works over which the fiber pieces were stretched.

The result, Guer­ni­ca 3D, was lat­er dis­played as part of Meta­mor­pho­sis, a Picas­so-themed exhi­bi­tion at the Roy­al Palace in Milan.

A look at Sul filo dell’arte’s Insta­gram page reveals that Picas­so is not the only artist to inspire their nee­dles. Fri­da Kahlo, Magritte, Kei­th Har­ing, Andy Warhol, and Vin­cent Van Gogh are among those to whom they have paid painstak­ing woolen trib­ute.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Makes Guer­ni­ca So Shock­ing? An Ani­mat­ed Video Explores the Impact of Picasso’s Mon­u­men­tal Anti-War Mur­al

The Gestapo Points to Guer­ni­ca and Asks Picas­so, “Did You Do This?;” Picas­so Replies “No, You Did!”

Behold an Anatom­i­cal­ly Cor­rect Repli­ca of the Human Brain, Knit­ted by a Psy­chi­a­trist

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Jan­u­ary 6 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates Cape-Cod­di­ties (1920) by Roger Liv­ingston Scaife. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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“Don’t Try”: The Philosophy of the Hardworking Charles Bukowski

in Creativity, Life, Literature | December 13th, 2019

If Charles Bukows­ki were alive today, what would you ask him? Best to avoid the stan­dard ques­tions put to writ­ers about how or why they chose to become writ­ers — not just because Bukows­ki would sure­ly respond with a few col­or­ful­ly choice words of dis­missal, but because he embod­ied the lack of choice that char­ac­ter­izes the life of every seri­ous cre­ator. Accord­ing to the Pur­suit of Won­der video essay above, Bukows­ki dropped out of col­lege halfway through in order to write. After a peri­od spent “bounc­ing around the Unit­ed States, doing short-term blue-col­lar jobs while writ­ing hun­dred of short sto­ries,” none of which broke him into the lit­er­ary big time, came a high­ly unpro­duc­tive peri­od of blue-col­lar jobs with­out the accom­pa­ny­ing writ­ing.

At the end of a writ­ing-free decade, Bukows­ki “near­ly died from a seri­ous bleed­ing ulcer.” This got him back on track, as brush­es with mor­tal­i­ty tend to do: he sub­se­quent­ly quit his job at the post office and returned to writ­ing full-time. It was only a few years before he went back to work at the post office, but this time he kept writ­ing, putting in the real work at the type­writer before each shift at the day job. He did so with­out the prospect of suc­cess any­where in the off­ing, at least not before he reached mid­dle age. “It took Bukows­ki years and years of writ­ing and toil­ing and try­ing to final­ly have cir­cum­stances work out in his favor so he could gain trac­tion and find suc­cess as a writer,” says the video’s nar­ra­tor. And yet, as we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly not­ed here at Open Cul­ture, into Bukowski’s grave­stone are chis­eled these words: “Don’t try.”

“How could a man who became suc­cess­ful in ful­fill­ing his idea of him­self — a man who, although it took a while, found immense respect and recog­ni­tion for his craft, all because of his relent­less try­ing — how could this man leave the words don’t try as his final offer­ing?” We might inter­pret them in light of a let­ter from Bukows­ki to a friend, the writer and pub­lish­er William Packard. “Too many writ­ers write for the wrong rea­sons,” declared Bukows­ki. “They want to get famous or they want to get rich or they want to get laid by the girls with the blue­bells in their hair… When every­thing goes best, it’s not because you chose writ­ing, but because writ­ing chose you.” Bukows­ki did­n’t decide to be a writer; nobody actu­al­ly ded­i­cat­ed to a pur­suit ever had to decide which pur­suit it would be.

“We work too hard. We try too hard,” Bukows­ki writes to Packard. “Don’t try. Don’t work. It’s there. Look­ing right at us, aching to kick out of the closed womb.” He may have meant, as the video’s nar­ra­tor puts it, that “if you have to try to try, if you have to try to care about some­thing or have to try to want some­thing, per­haps you don’t care about it, and per­haps you don’t want it.” And “if the thought of not doing the thing hurts more than the thought of poten­tial­ly suf­fer­ing through the process, if the thought of a life with­out it or nev­er hav­ing tried it at all ter­ri­fies you, if it comes to you, through you, out of you, almost as if you’re not try­ing, per­haps Bukows­ki might say here, try, and ‘if you’re going to try, go all the way.’ ” That quote comes from Bukowski’s nov­el Fac­to­tum — the sto­ry of a writer in search of blue-col­lar work that won’t get in the way of his one true craft — and we might do well to take it one sen­tence fur­ther: “Oth­er­wise, don’t even start.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“Don’t Try”: Charles Bukowski’s Con­cise Phi­los­o­phy of Art and Life

Inspi­ra­tion from Charles Bukows­ki: You Might Be Old, Your Life May Be “Crap­py,” But You Can Still Make Good Art

Charles Bukows­ki Explains What Good Writ­ing and the Good Life Have in Com­mon

Is Charles Bukows­ki a Self-Help Guru? Hear Five of His Bru­tal­ly Hon­est, Yet Odd­ly Inspir­ing, Poems and Decide for Your­self

Charles Bukows­ki Explains How to Beat Depres­sion: Spend 3–4 Days in Bed and You’ll Get the Juices Flow­ing Again (NSFW)

Charles Bukows­ki Reads His Poem “The Secret of My Endurance” 

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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What to Wear to a Successful PhD Thesis Defense? A Skirt’s Worth of Academic Rejection Letters

in Creativity, Education, Fashion, Life, Science | November 8th, 2019

Some peo­ple are par­a­lyzed by rejec­tion.

Oth­ers, like Michi­gan State University’s Earth and Envi­ron­men­tal Sci­ences PhD can­di­date, Caitlin Kir­by, sport rejec­tion like a man­tle of hon­or… or more accu­rate­ly, a pleat­ed skirt falling to just below mid-thigh.

“Suc­cess­ful­ly defend­ed my PhD dis­ser­ta­tion today!” Kir­by wrote in a Tweet that has since gar­nered over 25,000 likes. “In the spir­it of acknowl­edg­ing & nor­mal­iz­ing fail­ure in the process, I defend­ed in a skirt made of rejec­tion let­ters from the course of my PhD.”

The cus­tom gar­ment, which Kir­by teamed with a dark blaz­er and red waist­band, was orga­nized in two tiers, with a tulle ruf­fle peep­ing out beneath.

MSU’s Career Ser­vices Network’s Direc­tor of Employ­er Rela­tions, Karin Han­son, told the Lans­ing State Jour­nal that rejec­tion comes as a shock to many high achiev­ing MSU stu­dents.

Kirby’s deci­sion to upcy­cle 17 dis­ap­point­ing let­ters received over the course of her aca­d­e­m­ic career was par­tial­ly inspired by a Parks and Recre­ation episode in which the skirt of Leslie Knope’s wed­ding dress is a wear­able col­lage of news­pa­per arti­cles about the char­ac­ter, drawn from ear­li­er episodes

More to the point, Kirby’s skirt is part of an ongo­ing cam­paign to acknowl­edge rejec­tion as a nec­es­sary, if painful, part of aca­d­e­m­ic growth.

The whole process of revis­it­ing those old let­ters and mak­ing that skirt sort of remind­ed me that you have to apply to a lot of things to suc­ceed. It seems coun­ter­in­tu­itive to wear your rejec­tions to your last test in your Ph.D, but we talked about our rejec­tions every week and I want­ed them to be a part of it.

And, as she lat­er not­ed in a tweet:

Accep­tances and rejec­tions are often based on the tra­di­tion­al val­ues of acad­e­mia, which excludes POC by not valu­ing the approach­es, research ques­tions, and expe­ri­ences that POC tend to bring to their work.

Kirby’s let­ters were culled from a vari­ety of sources—scholarship appli­ca­tions, sub­mis­sions to aca­d­e­m­ic jour­nals, and pro­pos­als for con­fer­ence pre­sen­ta­tions.  Unfor­tu­nate­ly and We regret to inform you are recur­rent motifs. About 8 let­ters were left on the cut­ting room floor.

But she is pre­pared to low­er her hem­line, when she starts apply­ing for jobs, fol­low­ing a stint at the Research Insti­tute for Urban and Region­al Devel­op­ment in Dort­mund, Ger­many, the result of a suc­cess­ful Ful­bright appli­ca­tion.

Fol­low Kirby’s exam­ple and turn your tem­po­rary set­backs into a pow­er skirt, using the tuto­r­i­al above.

via Boing Boing 

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read Rejec­tion Let­ters Sent to Three Famous Artists: Sylvia Plath, Kurt Von­negut & Andy Warhol

T.S. Eliot, as Faber & Faber Edi­tor, Rejects George Orwell’s “Trot­skyite” Nov­el Ani­mal Farm (1944)

Gertrude Stein Gets a Snarky Rejec­tion Let­ter from Pub­lish­er (1912)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Decem­ber 9 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain, res­ur­rects Dennison’s Christ­mas Book (1921). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Benefits of Boredom: How to Stop Distracting Yourself and Get Creative Ideas Again

in Creativity, Neuroscience, Psychology | November 7th, 2019

Here in the 21st cen­tu­ry, we have con­quered bore­dom. Impres­sive though that achieve­ment may be, it has­n’t come with­out cost: As with many oth­er con­di­tions we’ve man­aged to elim­i­nate from our lives, bore­dom now looks to have been essen­tial to full human exis­tence. Has our real­i­ty of on-demand dis­trac­tions, tai­lored ever more close­ly to our impuls­es and desires, robbed us of yet anoth­er form of every­day adver­si­ty that built up the char­ac­ter of pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions? Per­haps, but more impor­tant­ly, it may also have dried up our well of cre­ativ­i­ty. The frus­tra­tion that descends on us when try­ing to come up with new ideas; the itch we feel, when­ev­er we start doing some­thing, to do some­thing else; our inabil­i­ty to go more than a few min­utes with­out look­ing at our phones: we can hard­ly assume these mod­ern prob­lems are unre­lat­ed.

“When you’re bored, you tend to day­dream, and your mind wan­ders, and this is a very, very impor­tant part of the cre­ative process,” says psy­chol­o­gist San­di Mann in the ani­mat­ed BBC REEL video at the top of the post. “If you find that you’re stuck on a prob­lem, or you’re real­ly wor­ried about some­thing and can’t seem to find a way out, take some time out. Just be bored. Let your mind wan­der, and you might just find that a cre­ative solu­tion will pop into your head.”

But we’ve fall­en into the habit of “swip­ing and scrolling our bore­dom away,” seek­ing “a dopamine hit from new and nov­el expe­ri­ences” — most often dig­i­tal ones — to assuage our fears of bore­dom. And the more such stim­u­la­tion we get, the more we need, mean­ing that, “para­dox­i­cal­ly, the way to deal with bore­dom is to allow more of it into our life.”

“Once you start day­dream­ing and allow your mind to real­ly wan­der,” Mann says, “you start think­ing a lit­tle bit beyond the con­scious, a lit­tle bit into the sub­con­scious, which allows sort of dif­fer­ent con­nec­tions to take place.” She says it in “How Bore­dom Can Lead to Your Most Bril­liant Ideas,” a TED Talk by jour­nal­ist Manoush Zomoro­di. Like the pub­lic-radio pod­cast­er she is, Zomoro­di brings in inter­view clips from not just Mann but a range of experts on the sub­ject of bore­dom and dis­trac­tion, includ­ing neu­ro­sci­en­tist Daniel Lev­itin, who warns that “every time you shift your atten­tion from one thing to anoth­er, the brain has to engage a neu­ro­chem­i­cal switch that uses up nutri­ents in the brain to accom­plish that.” And so the “mul­ti­task­ing” in which we once prid­ed our­selves amounts to noth­ing more than “rapid­ly shift­ing from one thing to the next, deplet­ing neur­al resources as you go.”

We’ve become like the exper­i­ment sub­jects, described in the Ver­i­ta­si­um video above, who were asked to sit alone in an emp­ty room for a few min­utes with noth­ing in front of them but a but­ton that they knew would shock them. In the end, 25 per­cent of the women and 60 per­cent of the men chose, unasked, to shock them­selves, pre­sum­ably out of a pref­er­ence for painful stim­u­la­tion over no stim­u­la­tion at all. How much, we have to won­der, does that ulti­mate­ly dif­fer from the dis­trac­tions we com­pul­sive­ly seek at every oppor­tu­ni­ty in the form of social media, games, and oth­er addic­tive apps? And what do these increas­ing­ly fre­quent self-admin­is­tered jolts do to our abil­i­ty to iden­ti­fy promis­ing avenues of thought and fol­low them all the way to their most fruit­ful con­clu­sions? As the old say­ing goes, only the bor­ing are bored. But if our tech­no­log­i­cal lives keep going the way they’ve been going, soon only the bored will be inter­est­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Take Advan­tage of Bore­dom, the Secret Ingre­di­ent of Cre­ativ­i­ty

How Infor­ma­tion Over­load Robs Us of Our Cre­ativ­i­ty: What the Sci­en­tif­ic Research Shows

Lyn­da Bar­ry on How the Smart­phone Is Endan­ger­ing Three Ingre­di­ents of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Lone­li­ness, Uncer­tain­ty & Bore­dom

David Lynch Explains How Med­i­ta­tion Boosts Our Cre­ativ­i­ty (Plus Free Resources to Help You Start Med­i­tat­ing)

How to Focus: Five Talks Reveal the Secrets of Con­cen­tra­tion

Why Time Seems to Speed Up as We Get Old­er: What the Research Says

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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The Best of the Edward Gorey Envelope Art Contest

in Comics/Cartoons, Creativity, K-12 | October 21st, 2019

What a delight it must have been to have been one of Edward Gorey’s cor­re­spon­dents, or even a postal work­er charged with han­dling his out­go­ing mail.

The late author and illus­tra­tor had a pen­chant for embell­ish­ing envelopes with the hairy beasts, pok­er-faced chil­dren, and cats who are the main­stays of his dark­ly humor­ous aes­thet­ic.

(A num­ber of these envelopes and some 60 post­cards and sketch­es are includ­ed in Float­ing Worlds: The Let­ters of Edward Gorey and Peter F. Neumey­er, which doc­u­ments the cor­re­spon­dence-based friend­ship between Gorey and the author with whom he col­lab­o­rat­ed on three children’s books, includ­ing the delight­ful­ly macabre Don­ald Has a Dif­fi­cul­ty.)

The Edward Gorey House, a beloved Cape Cod res­i­dence turned muse­um, has been keep­ing the tra­di­tion alive with its annu­al Hal­loween Enve­lope Art Con­test.

Com­peti­tors of all ages vie for the oppor­tu­ni­ty to have their win­ning (and run­ners up and “very-close-to-being-run­ners-up”) Gorey-inspired entries dis­played in the Gorey House and its dig­i­tal exten­sions.

2019’s theme is the high­ly evoca­tive “Uncom­fort­able Crea­tures” … and depend­ing on the speed with which you can exe­cute a bril­liant idea and deliv­er it to the post office, you may still have a shot—entries must be post­marked by Mon­day, Octo­ber 21, with win­ners to be announced on Hal­loween.

In addi­tion to Stef Kiihn Aschenbrenner’s win­ning enve­lope from the 2018 contest’s over-18 cat­e­go­ry (top), some of our favorites from past years are repro­duced here. Our inky-black hearts are espe­cial­ly warmed to see the spir­it of the mas­ter kin­dling the imag­i­na­tions of the youngest entrants—special shout out to Daniel Miley, aged 4.

View five years’ worth of notable Hal­loween Enve­lope Con­test entries on the Edward Gorey House web­site (2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014) or down­load the offi­cial entry form and race to the post office with your bid for 2019 glo­ry.

Entries must be post­marked by Mon­day, Octo­ber 21 and addressed to Edward Gorey House, 8 Straw­ber­ry Lane, Yarmouth Port, MA 02675 USA.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lemo­ny Snick­et Reveals His Edward Gorey Obses­sion in an Upcom­ing Ani­mat­ed Doc­u­men­tary

Edward Gorey Talks About His Love Cats & More in the Ani­mat­ed Series, “Goreytelling”

Edward Gorey Illus­trates H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds in His Inim­itable Goth­ic Style (1960)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Novem­ber 4 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates Louise Jor­dan Miln’s “Woo­ings and Wed­dings in Many Climes (1900). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Make an Adorable Crocheted Freddie Mercury; Download a Free Crochet Pattern Online

in Creativity, How to Learn for Free, Music | September 23rd, 2019

Giv­en his pas­sion for his pussy­cats, is it real­ly such a stretch to imag­ine Queen front­man Fred­die Mer­cury pass­ing a qui­et evening at home with a cup of tea and a bas­ket of cro­chet sup­plies?

Tis but a handicrafter’s fan­ta­sy.

Oth­er than a boy­ish inter­est in stamp col­lect­ing, Mer­cury claimed to have no hob­bies, famous­ly telling an inter­view­er who inquired, “I have none. I have a lot of sex. Try and get out of that one!”

Which is not to say sex and cro­chet are mutu­al­ly exclu­sive.

If your cro­chet notions are root­ed in frumpy afghans, lumpy baby sweaters, and 1970s beer can hats, you need to get with the times and pic­ture a church bazaar pop­u­lat­ed exclu­sive­ly by sexy woolen Mer­curys in minia­ture fac­sim­i­les of his Wem­b­ley Sta­di­um era garb.

Moji-Moji Design’s Jan­ice Holmes, a self-taught expert in amigu­ru­mi, the art of tiny cro­cheted crea­tures, devised the pat­tern in order to stitch up a spe­cial request for a Queen-lov­ing friend.

The result, com­plete with hairy chest, jack­et buck­les, and a bam­boo skew­er mic stand, was so fab­u­lous that she felt com­pelled to share the pat­tern with the world, in hope that those who took advan­tage of the free down­load would con­sid­er donat­ing to the Mer­cury Phoenix Trust, a char­i­ty that band­mates Bri­an May and Roger Tay­lor and Queen man­ag­er Jim Beach found­ed to fight HIV/AIDS world­wide.

Those who braved the tricky, many-stepped pat­tern were invit­ed to share pho­tos of their final cre­ation on Moji-Moji’s Face­book page. As of last count, there are 21, and it’s fas­ci­nat­ing to note the slight vari­a­tions in eyes, mus­tache, and chest hair.

In keep­ing with amigu­ru­mi tra­di­tion, the afford­able pat­terns in Moji-Moji’s Etsy shop run toward cute ani­mals, cud­dly mon­sters, and sea­son­al favorites like witch­es and elves.

But Fred­die clear­ly stirred some­thing up. Read the com­ments and you’ll find crafters peti­tion­ing Holmes for more music icons like David Bowie and Prince.

Ready to snug­gle up with a cro­chet hook? Down­load Moji-Moji’s free Fred­die Mer­cury ami­garu­mi pat­tern here.

If that’s rather too daunt­ing, ease into the crafti­ness with anoth­er free down­load—Lady Lazy­bones’ far less advanced fold­able cube­craft Fred­die.

Even if you plan on stick­ing with sex as your sole hob­by, please con­sid­er mak­ing a vol­un­tary con­tri­bu­tion to the Mer­cury Phoenix Trust here.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Meet Fred­die Mer­cury and His Faith­ful Feline Friends

Watch Behind-the-Scenes Footage From Fred­die Mercury’s Final Video Per­for­mance

Fred­die Mer­cury Reimag­ined as Com­ic Book Heroes

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Octo­ber 7 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates the art of Aubrey Beard­s­ley. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Harvard Students Perform Amazing Boomwhacker Covers of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin,” Toto’s “Africa” & More

in Creativity, Harvard, K-12, Life, Music | September 2nd, 2019

Short­ly before he died, Queen’s front­man, Fred­die Mer­cury, famous­ly remarked, “Do what­ev­er you want with my life and my music, just don’t make it bor­ing.”

Mis­sion accom­plished, thanks to the Har­vard Under­grad­u­ate Drum­mers, more com­mon­ly known as THUD.

The ensem­ble, which rehears­es week­ly, is will­ing to con­sid­er any­thing with per­cus­sive potential—plastic cups, chalk­boards, buckets—as an instru­ment, but is best known for its vir­tu­oso boomwhack­er per­for­mances.

A boomwhack­er, for the unini­ti­at­ed, is a light­weight, hol­low plas­tic tube, whose length deter­mines its musi­cal pitch. When smacked against hand or thigh, it pro­duces a pleas­ing­ly res­o­nant sound. Col­or-cod­ing helps play­ers keep track of which boomwhack­er to reach for dur­ing a fast-paced, pre­cise­ly orches­trat­ed num­ber.

In the­o­ry, boomwhack­ers are sim­ple enough for a child to mas­ter, but THUD takes things to a lofti­er plateau with cus­tom craft­ed sheet music sys­tem­ized so that no one play­er gets stuck with an impos­si­bly com­plex task.

“A lot of it real­ly comes down to feel and mus­cle mem­o­ry,” THUD’s assis­tant direc­tor Ben Palmer told The Irish Exam­in­er. “After play­ing the song enough and inter­nal­is­ing it, we have a sense of where our notes come in. Also, many times our parts will play off each oth­er, so we give each oth­er cues by look­ing at each oth­er just before we play.”

(That Ker­mit the Frog-like voice chim­ing in on THUD’s “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” cov­er, which many view­ers have mis­tak­en for an obnox­ious audi­ence mem­ber get­ting a lit­tle too into the pro­ceed­ings, is actu­al­ly an ensem­ble mem­ber help­ing the oth­ers stay the course.

As seri­ous as the group is about rehearsal and pro­vid­ing local school kids with free inter­ac­tive music lessons, their live shows lean in to the silli­ness inher­ent in their cho­sen instru­ment.

This good humored self-aware­ness defus­es the snarki­er com­ments on their YouTube chan­nel (“So this is why Har­vard’s tuition is so expen­sive…”)

Check out more THUD per­for­mances on the group’s YouTube chan­nel, or help defray their oper­at­ing costs with a pledge to their Patre­on.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pachelbel’s Chick­en: Your Favorite Clas­si­cal Pieces Played Mas­ter­ful­ly on a Rub­ber Chick­en

The Orig­i­nal Noise Artist: Hear the Strange Exper­i­men­tal Sounds & Instru­ments of Ital­ian Futur­ist, Lui­gi Rus­so­lo (1913)

The Health Ben­e­fits of Drum­ming: Less Stress, Low­er Blood Pres­sure, Pain Relief, and Altered States of Con­scious­ness

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inkyzine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Sep­tem­ber 9 for anoth­er sea­son of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Nigerian Teenagers Are Making Slick Sci Fi Films With Their Smartphones

in Creativity, Film, iPhone, Technology | August 26th, 2019

Some­one should real­ly snap up the rights for a movie about The Crit­ics, a col­lec­tive of self-taught teenage film­mak­ers from north­west­ern Nige­ria.

The boys’ ded­i­ca­tion, ambi­tion, and no-bud­get inven­tive­ness calls to mind oth­er film­mak­ing fanat­ics, from the sequestered, home­schooled broth­ers of The Wolf­pack to the fic­tion­al Swed­ing spe­cial­ists of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl and Be Kind, Rewind.

While smart­phones and free edit­ing apps have def­i­nite­ly made it eas­i­er for aspir­ing film­mak­ers to bring their fan­tasies to fruition, it’s worth not­ing that The Crit­ics saved for a month to buy the green fab­ric for their chro­ma key effects.

Their pro­duc­tions are also plagued with the inter­net and pow­er out­ages that are a fre­quent occur­rence in their home base of Kaduna, slow­ing every­thing from the ren­der­ing process to the Youtube visu­al effects tuto­ri­als that have advanced their craft.

To date they’ve filmed 20 shorts on a smart phone with a smashed screen, mount­ed to a bro­ken micro­phone stand that’s found new life as a home­made tri­pod.

Their sim­ple set up will be com­ing in for an upgrade, how­ev­er, now that Nol­ly­wood direc­tor Kemi Adeti­ba has brought their efforts to the atten­tion of a much wider audi­ence, who donat­ed $5,800 in a fundrais­ing cam­paign.

It’s easy to imag­ine the young male demo­graph­ic flock­ing to a fea­ture-length, big-bud­get expan­sion of Z: The Begin­ning. It’s pos­si­ble even the art house crowd could be lured to a sum­mer block­buster whose set­ting is Nige­ria, thir­ty years into the future, a nov­el­ty for those of us unversed in Nol­ly­wood’s prodi­gious out­put.

The post-apoc­a­lyp­tic short, above, took the crew 7 months to film and edit. The stars also inhab­it­ed a num­ber of off­screen roles: stunt coor­di­na­tor, gaffer, prop mas­ter, com­pos­er, con­ti­nu­ity…

What’s next? Ear­li­er this month, Africa News revealed that the boys are busy with a new film whose plot they aren’t at lib­er­ty to reveal. We’re guess­ing a sequel, to go by a not so sub­tle hint fol­low­ing Z’s final cred­its and a mov­ing ded­i­ca­tion to “the ones we’ve lost.”

“Hor­ror, com­e­dy, sci-fi, action, we do all,” The Crit­ics’ pro­claim on their Youtube chan­nel, care­ful­ly cat­e­go­riz­ing their work as “films not skits.” (Their films’ length has thus far been dic­tat­ed by the unpre­dictabil­i­ty of their wifi sit­u­a­tion—Chase, below, is five min­utes long and took two days to ren­der.

“One of the tar­gets we aim for in the years to come is to make the biggest film in Nige­ria and prob­a­bly beyond,” God­win Josi­ah, Z’s 19-year-old writer-direc­tor told Chan­nels Tele­vi­sion, Lagos’ 24-hour news chan­nel:

We want to do some­thing crazy, we want to do some­thing great, some­thing that has not been done before, and from what has been going on now, we believe quite well that it is going to hap­pen soon enough.

Watch The Crit­ics’ films and mak­ing-ofs on their Youtube chan­nel.

Sup­port their work with a pledge to their recent­ly launched Patre­on.

via Kot­tke/Africa News

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Strange and Won­der­ful Movie Posters from Ghana: The Matrix, Alien & More

High School Kids Stage Alien: The Play and You Can Now Watch It Online

Direc­tor Robert Rodriguez Teach­es The Basics of Film­mak­ing in Under 10 Min­utes

Hear Kevin Smith’s Three Tips For Aspir­ing Film­mak­ers (NSFW)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inkyzine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Sep­tem­ber 9 for anoth­er sea­son of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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