Shippetri : A combination of Shibori with movement via puppetry.

Attenborough-esque Puppet Moments
Your mind may wander as you watch this brief film, don't be impatient... or feel it necessary to press the stop button, but let time slow down for you  and, for a short time, escape this fast moving life-style we are all living. Perhaps the audio-visuals will move you to a creative, or restful, state.

PechaKucha Kreatures 2013 from Daniel Millson on Vimeo.

Puppetry: Wendy Passmore-Godfrey & Karin Millson
Film: Daniel Millson & Wendy Passmore-Godfrey
Editing: Daniel Millson
Text and Narration: Karin Millson
Full credits are given in the video itself.

If you are a follower of my work/blog, you will know that I have had a long history of creating artworks based on marine worms (Nudibranchia)* from felt, silk, and synthetic materials, using shibori with other mixed media techniques.  
My Kreatures ought to move, they each have a presence, a personality and people want to touch them and move them to give life to the otherwise inanimate; to see how they articulate and how they might have lived.  They are designed to be move and be moved. 

This year I collaborated with the very talented puppeteer, Wendy Passmore-Godfrey, to begin to animate my Kreatures.  There are many avenues we can walk with this but this year's work culminated in a short presentation at the Puppet Power, 2013 Conference : The Fearless Face of Puppetry  at a Pechakucha-style event, in Calgary this weekend.

This was a wonderful opportunity that Wendy provided. The evening was full of very moving stories of people using puppets to approach, teach or overcome social, medical or educational issues.  I was very moved by many of the presentations, and privileged to be part of the occasion.

Our presentation came after the short intermission.  And I believe it provided a period of lighter relief, although one comment on YouTube says "I find myself disturbed and fascinated by this all at once." (Runzu87).  Clearly, our Vimeo film does have powerful messages, as we hoped and as I alluded to during my, possibly, poetic introduction.

On a more personal level, the involvement of puppetry took some of my fear out of presenting my work and I hope we might use the combination of visual and performing arts to even greater effect in the future.
*Thanks due to Gary Cobb and Dave Mullins for their work at Nudibranchs of the Sunshine Coast Australia.  and their generous permission to use their imagery to stimulate my work and presentation of my work from time to time.