Puppets and performances in circuit bending
Multicultural projects
Explore – Multimedia and Arts Workshops
The idea here is to be able to work on the co-writing of a project with the child as the central actor. From the practices of circuit bending (electronic detour of toys), we propose to the children to reinvent their favorite objects by calling upon their free creativity. Once these objects/characters have been transformed, we will work on their manipulation in order to give them life as puppets. Object theater will allow us to approach puppets in an unconventional way.
Circuit bending, which combines recovery with experimentation (we open and operate!), makes us aware that everything can become art. We are sometimes confronted with failure, the one that brings us closer to the success to come! It is then the occasion to approach a scientific culture and a technical and electronic know-how ignored but within the reach of all.
We handle tools often never seen before to give life to new toys, new puppets with a story. Only the child decides what to do with it and there is no right or wrong way but each one at his own pace: we take confidence! As this practice is part of the zero waste movement, we will pay particular attention to using local or reused resources and to avoid buying new items as much as possible. It is therefore a story that is told through its objects, its manipulations, its sounds… .
We learn to make them live, breathe, we give them intentions and this thanks to notions of object theater and body setting. We work on a theater where the presence of the child is declined in a multiplicity of modes of figuration, some materialized and animated by the manipulation, others carried by the actors. The object or puppet theater then appeals to the imagination of the show, to its capacity to accept the theatrical convention and to let itself be carried in a story.
It is not necessarily a question of producing a final rendering in the form of a show, but rather of working on the process, the action where the child creates with his body, a body in a dedicated space.
It is an opportunity to explore places and architecture as a space for creation.
The notion of performance will be an integral part of the creation process and will be worked on together with the different possible participants (teachers, local recycling center…) but especially with the children’s desires.
These desires can be worked on and collected outside of “workshop” time. It is therefore essential to ensure that the teacher has the necessary autonomy for this type of project, which remains at the service of the class. It is, in fact, the teaching staff that is the key to the success of such an adventure. They know the children, the program and will be the perfect mediator between the project and the students. We will therefore make sure to communicate constantly with them in order to adapt the project to the time and to the children.
We also propose in parallel visits of exhibitions of object detour such as Rainforest where carcasses of cars, pipes and other bikes become animals of the Amazonian forest.
The professional artists will be present to bring their knowledge and accompany the children in their creative process in relation to the educational needs of each child.
Artists intervening in Nantes with specialists in circuit bending:
Chloé Malaise
Fryderyck Expert
Mad Processor