Some Sick Lightboxes

So I've been looking at these paper sculptures done by Hari and Deepti, and they; somehow, bring me back to my childhood. I've always loved lights, in any context. From the warm glow in you're living room to the crazy light shows you'd see at some bizarre electronic music festival, except this has a much more soothing feel too it.

So basically they use GIANT pieces of paper and cut out THOUSANDS of tiny pieces to create a silhouette of whatever they want! Then they just put it in a shadow box and throw some LED lights behind it. My words don't do it much justice, its definitely done more carefully and eloquently than I've put it, just check it out for yourself!

 

Hours upon hours must have been spent cutting out such fine details, look at the craftsmanship in that!!

And my personal favorite:

Here's what they look like without any LED lights:

This one is pretty cool too, there's actually a video showing how it was made!

Here's the website i grabbed all these pictures from: (http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2014/03/illuminated-cut-paper-light-boxes-by-hari-deepti/)

And of course if you're looking for that video, it can be found at that web address.

Of course all of these amazing pieces have been done by Deepti Nair and Harikrishnan Panicker.

So apparently they where inspired to do these kinds of pieces by Balinese shadow puppets. I of course had absolutely no idea of what those were, so i looked it up. The name does pretty much say it all; its shadow puppet theater. Wayang is a type of performance done with human performers and shadow puppets, (and in some that I have seen) with illuminated backgrounds! I can definitely see where the inspiration came from. Here are some examples, see if you can spot the similarity's!

Anyway, I think this stuff is pretty cool. If i get a chance, I'd love to try and make one of these, once i can find some goddamn time. Don't really have much of it these days... ANYWAY, thanks for reading, just wanted to share!