Here are a couple of new “inventions” – a Dream Reader, and a wizard staff, both made with found objects.
Made with a plastic box, some voltmeters, a slide viewer, antique headphones and various other bits.
Wizard staff lit up. It’s quite heavy. The wiring needs to be finished so a ring on your finger lights up the staff when you touch the metal triggers.
Staff in progress. Lots of found objects and sewing machine parts.
As a space nerd, part of my personal prop projects include rockets. Here are three examples.
A Steampunk rocket, made from a wooden toy puzzle. This was made about 20 years ago.
A rocket I’m working on for a personal book project. More this summer.
Back in 2011, I posted some images I created, trying to reproduce the effect of light through eyelids that are almost closed. Recently, I created a video based on these images for an exciting exhibit at Dawson College called Vision(s), on till May 11th at the Warren G. Flowers Gallery at Dawson College in Montreal. The video was created using photography through polarized mylar, Photoshop layering and effects, video segments using lenses and found objects in front of the lens and After Effects compositing – my first full video using that program. I created the music using a tiny segment of the end of a song, time stretching it, reversing it and layering it on top of itself to create an ambient wash.
Here’s the stuff I used to make the video.
If you’re in Wisconsin this summer, there will be an exhibit of steampunk art, objects, costumes etc. in Oshkosh. It’s at the beautiful Oshkosh Public Museum, and will have some of my artwork and gadgets, including blueprints from “The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne” and more. I hope to get down there for a visit. It’s from June 8 to September 8. I sent time my time machine, Nautilus drawings, a couple of rayguns and 25 blueprints from Jules Verne. A few samples here:
There are things we see that are almost impossible to reproduce on canvas, or digitally. Things like the patterns behind our eyelids that propagate geometrically when you press on your eyes, or the beautiful prismatic chromatic aberrations from sunlight through your eyelashes as you hold them open ever so slightly. Here are samples from a series of images I’ve been creating called “Eyes Half Closed.” These were created in Photoshop, using photos which I took through polarized mylar sheets and glass marbles. I added things like “floaters,” trying to reproduce the loose blood cells we observe floating inside our eyes. I’ve got quite a few of these which I want to make into an interactive looping slideshow to soothing music. (click to view full size.)
Meinert Hansen 