Homunculus

5 Comments » for Homunculus

1. Shelley Noble says:

   January 11, 2010 at 11:50 pm

   T’weren’t stop mo, uses time-lapse on the rotting bits at the start, looks to be cgi after that. Well rendered rendering, as it were. Tell me this, genomiknower, what is the message point of such a film? Lord knows making it likely took hundreds of hours of effort. Was it supposed to just be cool or “do something” perhaps?

2. admin says:

   January 12, 2010 at 12:12 am

   Art innit. The point is to exaggerate the resonant bits of reality… cos… um… it gets people to go “Oooh…”, and attunes us to the divine.

   The resonant parts of this are to do with that whole “animated dying matter” thing that’s part of alchemical lore… and the soulless nastiness of eyeless creatures, eating each other.

   The layout of the fruit/fowl etc looks like it might be based on some sort of 17thC Dutch still-life. Kalf or someone. The style isn’t a million miles away from the whole Vanitas thing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanitas albeit a bit cartoonier.

   Or it might just be a cool thing to do. I’d be mildly surprised if there wasn’t a little more to it than that though.

3. Shelley Noble says:

   January 12, 2010 at 12:24 am

   Thanks so much. I read the utube blurb from the maker and concluded they were essentially just messing around with themes they thought cool, which include horror. So, that explains it being lost on me.

   You really are the knower of many things. Swell to know about Vanitas. And you are spot on about the reference to them in the short.

   Not so much on this film, but I bristle at art that takes a lot to make whose impetus was nothing more than a casual amusement. My reaction is always to ask why it was made.

4. admin says:

   January 12, 2010 at 1:33 am

   Really? I find it mildly amusing… kindof confirms my faith in the daftness of human nature.

   That scene in The Wall where (Sir (lol) Bob Geldof) goes bonkers and trashes his hotel room… then arranges all the detritus into a massive pattern on the floor has always kindof stayed with me – 25 years or so later. I mean anyone can trash a hotel room. To spend ages turning it into a massive bit of art that no one will see takes someone special.

   There’s this artist in Christchurch in NZ who goes out and “draws” massive murals on the beach at low tide with a rake. They then disappear at high tide – he was on TV a couple of weeks ago because he’d just got past the 1000 mark. Very transient, but there are worse ways of spending your time.

5. Shelley Noble says:

   January 12, 2010 at 10:24 am

   I appreciate your perspective on this. It smacks my view upside the head.

   I don’t mind the kinds of art you cite, nor things like Watts Towers that take decades, etc. But for some reason animations that don’t mean all that much to their makers irks me very much.

   Not that everything has to be earnest and deep but making frivolous animations wastes their time/resources and mine.

   Not sure why I’m so harsh on this.