Hey everyone!
My friend Renee sent this video to me today with shadow puppets performing “What a Wonderful World.”
I thought it was great, so sharing it here.
Enjoy!
(What a great idea to set What a Wonderful World to Shadow Puppets.)
“What a Wonderful World” is a song by Bob Thiele (using the pseudonym George Douglas) and George David Weiss. It was first recorded by Louis Armstrong and released as a single in early fall 1967, and was inducted in the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999.
In recent years, the song has come to be associated with the Christmas season (although it has no holiday or seasonal content in its lyrics). In 2006, XM Satellite Radio added “What a Wonderful World” to its Holiday/Christmas rotation, as did many terrestrial radio stations in the U.S. Numerous recording artists have covered the song for inclusion on their Christmas-themed albums, including Newsong and LeAnn Rimes. Also in 2006, a rock version appeared in the Suzuki New Grand Vitara television commercial performed by David Mills and Ian Wilson.
Shadow play (Chinese: ???, pi ying xi) or shadow puppetry is an ancient form of storytelling and entertainment using opaque, often articulated figures in front of an illuminated backdrop to create the illusion of moving images. It is popular in various cultures. At present, more than 20 countries are known to have shadow show troupes.
In the 1910s the German animator Lotte Reiniger pioneered silhouette animation as a format, whereby shadow play-like puppets are filmed frame-by-frame. This technique has been kept alive by subsequent animators and is still practised today, though cel animation (most famously in the TV anime Revolutionary Girl Utena) and computer animation (such as the German short film Our Man in Nirvana) has also been used to imitate the look of shadow play and silhouette animation.
Shadow theatre itself is still popular in many parts of Asia. Prahlad Acharya is one famous Indian magician who incorporates it into his performances.
A comment someone made…
“This is ART! ART as how art is supposed to be: Innovative, creative, comminicative, you name it. Not the way the institutionalized art is defined: provocative art. Provocative cause it isn`t even art. Everybody knows it, but it cannot be defined. Its in the nature of art that it cannot be defined, but this, THIS IS ART!”
Thanks
I liked it very much. Really neat to see someone do such cool things with sand. Thanks for sharing!