The Glass Character

Sunday, June 11, 2017

Goose stampede!

Wild goose stampede! For reasons unknown, a large group of geese encompassing three or four families began to run away in terror. Or maybe they were running TO something? Whatever it was, it must have been good (or bad). I wish I had managed to capture more than half a minute of this, but as usual I was focused on something else. I took this footage at Piper Spit, Burnaby Lake, my current favorite place to goose-watch.

Love in bloom

Marilyn in the morning

This will drive you NUTS!

Make your own Scotsman

The assignment was this: "Nanny, can you knit me a little Scottish guy playing the bagpipes?" No, I couldn't. Nevertheless, I hated to say no. I only had about ten days to do it in, a fraction of the usual time. This wasn't for a birthday present or anything trivial like that, but a Grade 6 school project on Scotland, so I felt I had to do a decent job on it. And I had no pattern.

I think she really thought this would be a fully-mechanized, four-inch-high, walking, talking, authentic bagpipe player, speaking in a weird accent and playing that abominable Scottish music, but it didn't quite turn out that way. For one thing, his legs were too stiff to march. The bagpipes were the hardest part. I found myself mucking around with wooden dowels, black Sharpies and plasticene. With my arthritic old hands and all the tiny scraps of costume that had to be sewn together, it was kind of murderous.

The wild red hair was a sort of tribute to William Wallace (though I don't know if he actually had wild red hair or not). This was from a Braveheart pattern that I didn't use, except for the hair. I had to cobble together bits and pieces from other doll patterns and make the rest up. It worked out OK, I think, but more dolls may not be in my future.

At one point I asked my husband if I should make him anatomically correct. He thought not, for one of the children might lift his kilt in curiosity about the old legend. You know the one I mean. And I have never knitted a tiny 1/2" penis, and didn't want to screw it up. Interestingly enough, there was a moment when "he" could have become a "she". It could have gone either way, for women can be pipers too, can they not? Chalk one up for gender fluidity.

After all that, and after a kind of lukewarm reception from my grandgirl (who's not into displays of emotion - not cool), I got my reward. My daughter-in-law picked it up and looked at it, whooped with laughter and said, "That's insane. That is INSANE!"

An insane Scotsman (with wild red hair) is more than I ever could have hoped for.

Saturday, June 10, 2017

Uncanny Danny doll

I am not sure how I created this - I feel a bit like Dr. Frankenstein - but it's a "blank" doll, a form for any sort of character you want to make (in this case, a Scottish piper in full regalia). But here he is not in full anything, just a little mutant floating around, a thing with no face.

There is something about the flat, faceless disk that strikes terror in the human heart. Nowhere Doll. The unliving. Little girls have a tendency to rip off all their Barbies' clothes which end up in a grimy heap in the corner of the closet. Almost all Barbies end up naked, their hair filthy and snarled. Is this a kind of primitive reversion to the Ur-doll, the hank of hair and piece of bone that started it all?

Fur and purrs

A monk dancing: animations

When you come upon a trove of photos as gorgeous as these, you just have to try to find a way to make them move. Thus moved our Dead Monk, Thelonius, who lives in a glass case in the Smithsonian Institution but who has been wheeling around for 450 years or so. I don't know whether they ever take him out for a spin or not, but a video was made which I finally got to see in its original form, not a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy.

This guy's got rhythm, especially in that last image where he resembles nothing more than a boxer warming up before the big match.

Dead monk in the middle of the road

Automaton friar in action

Description

This automaton of a friar can imitate a walking man thanks to a wind-up mechanism. The friar's eyes move from side to side, while one arm raises a rosary's cross for an automated kiss and the other arm strikes the chest in the "mea culpa" gesture from the Catholic Latin Mass. This friar was probably made in Spain or southern Germany and is about 450 years old. It has been in the museum's collections since the late 1970s. This video depicts the original figure. The clothing it wears are from the 1970s. The automaton and other mechanical figures, precursors to today's robots, are in the collections of the Division of Work and Industry, National Museum of American History.

Hey, this might not mean much to YOU, but it's a real bonus to my week. It seems if you wait around long enough, that missing video will eventually show up on YouTube. In this case, it's been missing since about 1567.

I've been fascinated with this guy (affectionately called Dead Monk, though I doubt if that was his real name - probably Saint Whatever) for years now, but couldn't find much about him. There are older, much more distorted and pixilated versions of this video, which I think plays along with the exhibit in the Smithsonian. I doubt if the old (old, OLD-old) man is still in operation - I think he spends most of his time in this glass case - but you never know. His 450-year-old joints may just be able to still perform.

This boxing stance implies that he's been sparring with Sister Ignatius in his spare time, perhaps explaining how he has managed to stay fit for 4 1/2 centuries. If I ever got to see this marvel in person, I think I'd turn cartwheels of joy.

I've written about automata before - and a creepier mechanical genre you never saw, the unliving dolls of all time. Now that there are so many more decent videos around, it's probably time to look at them again.

And Dead Monk animations! Watch this space for more.

Friday, June 9, 2017

Uncanny Valley High

Sometimes I create something that scares me, and I feel a bit like a mad scientist. It was only an innocent doll! I swear it. But it came out looking so - disturbing. It reminded me a bit of my juju doll experiment, in which the object of my wrath actually died. Had nothing to do with me, of course, and I am sure he died with a smile on his face. But he died, nonetheless.

There is more to this story, but I am afraid to tell it. Suffice it to say, I came out the other side of it realizing that a doll can be a way to concentrate loves, hates, and wishes, and not all of them are benevolent.

This doll will not bring about the death of any known human being. Unknown ones are another matter.

Valley of Unliving Dolls

I had a reborn doll phase that lasted a couple of months, if that. It mostly consisted of watching videos of women pretending that elaborately-shaped blobs of silicone were real babies. It was so bizarre that I became transfixed, watching little Tamsyn get "sick" (some of these dolls actually heat up and probably vomit), and Kendrick going on a shopping trip to buy a tiny pair of Skechers. Reborn addicts love to dress up their "babies" and put them in full public view, waiting for that "Oh my God I thought it was - " reaction. Some even leave them locked in hot cars. I can't help but see this as very disturbed behaviour.

But it was fascinating. I wanted the experience without spending the money, so I bought these two, Alyssa and Alex, for about $20 each on eBay. I knitted clothing for them and everything, then very soon I chucked them into a plastic box. Once in a while I would see them on the closet shelf and a wave of shivering dread would go through me. These are uncanny valley dolls, for sure, as are all the reborns.

My dolls aren't life-size and don't have the soft, squishy bodies of the true "unliving" doll. But they are definitely influenced by them, as they are deliberately more creepily real in their detail: fuzzy newborn-like hair, big glassy eyes, eyelashes and a rosebud mouth.

I'm unlikely to play with these much, and I certainly won't treat them like babies. The women in the videos really do seem to believe they're real, and I wonder sometimes how their actual relationships might suffer from their obsession. There's lots and lots of justification going on, assuring everyone that it's a harmless hobby that only brings joy to your life. No mention of the tens of thousands of dollars the high-end version of these things cost.

But is it joyful to dash to the baby's room in the middle of the night to take her temperature, when the "baby" is a chunk of vinyl with a gizmo inside it that makes the sound of a heartbeat? Are these women open with other women, normies I mean, about their "hobby"? My guess is that they're secretive, which is why the "reborn community" on YouTube means so much to them.