WW1 Razzle Dazzle ship camouflage
"Most camouflage is based on the idea of concealment and blending in with its surroundings. However another school of thought has argued for making the item in question appear to be a mashup of unrelated components. Naval camoufleurs found this theory particularly appealing. Blending didn’t work because ships operated in two different and constantly changing color environments - sea and sky. Any camo that concealed in one environment was usually spectacularly conspicuous in others.
Norman Wilkinson, a British naval officer and painter, suggested a scheme that came to be known as Dazzle or Razzle Dazzle painting. Wilkinson believed that breaking up a ship’s silhouette with brightly contrasting geometric designs would make it harder for U-boat captains to determine the ship’s course."
(FoundNYC Inc, 4 April 2009)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Shugo Tokumaru's Katachi: an animation of PVC silhouettes
Director, Concept, Animation - Kijek/Adamski, Production - Katarzyna Rup / Ab Film Production, Cast - Artur Cetnarowski, Gaffer - Heliograf, Blitz, Studio set - PlumArt Marcin "Śliwa" Śliwiński, Arek Szot, Joanna Kijek, PVC cutting - Dawid Krzyżanowski/ My-Art myart.com.pl, Thanks - Studio Las, Paweł Reyman.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Luminous: by experimental choreographer Saburo Teshigawara
Sadler's Wells, 11 - 12 October 2003
"Luminous is a choreographic masterpiece danced with virtuosity and refinement, litheness and lyricism. Saburo Teshigawara, who created it for his company Karas in 2001, is also lead dancer and, with his long-time collaborator Kei Miyaka, responsible for music, costume and scene design. His choreography is thrillingly liquid and - through both movement and stillness - boldly explores the sculptural qualities of the human body. Trained in classical ballet as well as the plastic arts, Teshigawaraís [sic] dancing seamlessly integrates the formal and amorphous, controlled and wild, slow and frenzied dimensions of his choreography.
In part 1, the dancers streak in and out of patches of light which at first seem to entrap them, but from which they eventually escape with spellbindingly mercurial gestures. Light is explored with glass mirrors, luminous constumes, light-box silhouettes and masterful use of spotlighting. And darkness - which in Teshigawaraís fertile choreographic imagination seems so much more than merely the absence of light - is embodied in the remarkable Stuart Jackson, a dancer blind from birth whose contact with the space around him feels almost physical. When he spreads his hands, or tries to touch the air with outstretched arms, or twists and turns in a space that he seems to have perfectly measured out, he brings alive a world - almost a world-view - experienced through touch and movement alone.
After the interval, the atmosphere changes completely. Strange figures, phosphorescently lit, some minus heads or hands or entire upper torsos, caper around elusively. At one point a cloak flies over the stage. A nun-like figure is suspended mid-air. Two walls enclose a glowing green figure, and open and shut like a huge book. And then all this eerie activity gives way to a meditative solo by Teshigawara, in white on a bare stage, who alternates floating movement with sudden sharp slicing curves and fast spilling turns. He is eventually joined by a black-clad Jackson. They circle around each other, in a dialogue that seems incomprehensible to the on-looker and yet vital in every sense of the word.
The only irritation in Luminous is the portentous and sometimes vapid poetry read by Evroy Deer, which gets in the way of the dancing and dilutes rather than adds to its ëmeaningí [sic]. Apart from that, however, nothing is sensationalist or kitschy. Above all nothing is arbitrary: everything feels essential in the indefinable way of great art."
(Simon May, 2003, Online Review London)
Fig.1 Dominik Mentzos, 'Saburo Teshigawara'.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
