As a kid, I was fascinated by carnivorous plants, so whenever I think ‘puppets’, I think about Audrey II—the all-singing venus-fly trap from Little Shop of Horrors. For this much more diminutive prompt, I looked instead at Drosera—or sundews—those no-less otherworldly plants characterised by their filaments and sticky beads.
I set about creating a five-fingered colony of sundews (cue some inexpert French knitting and some raised eyebrows as I made five phallic-looking ‘sleeves’ with polysterene balls shoved into one end). I finished them off with some wire tendrils and teeny red beads, and then, to bring them to life, I made a short film to see them in action.
I was further inspired by those time-lapse sequences you see of seeds germinating etc, which always have a slightly unsettling ‘agitation’ about them, so, to achieve that, I converted all the video footage from 25 frames per second to 12 frames—which created that glitchier feel.
Red's Kingdom 
Leave a reply to philgomm Cancel reply