Take a Spine-Chilling Walk in the Park
By Shift Time reporter Lorna Green
Shrewsbury's favourite picnic location will look more like a scene from War of the Worlds as the Shift Time festival of ideas gets under way. Take a stroll in the Quarry and feel your spine start to tingle as weird and wacky creatures begin to emerge.
The climax of the whole event will be when Dutch engineer and kinetic sculptor Theo Jansen sets his latest 'strandbeest' Umerus free.
A runway will be built in the Quarry to help launch the 12 metres long by 2 metres wide creature, which has never been seen before, outside Holland.
Sculptor Clinton Chaloner has also been in the park creating some strange beings out of wood with the help of local school children and passers-by. Clinton prefers to say they have all 'evolved' rather than been made by him.
He calls his collection Primordial Soup, which is the name commonly given to the mixture of materials present in the ancient oceans from which life evolved.
“In this case that mix consists of a great big pile of wood, a load of year nines and the tools. I thought it would make a nice school project as it would be a great vehicle to explain evolution to the pupils,” explains Clinton.
Clinton and his partner, Cheryl Hughes, spent two weeks at Belvidere School, Shrewsbury, and two weeks at Mary Webb School, Pontesbury.
The creatures will go on display in the Dingle on Saturday July 4 and Sunday July 5.
Other interesting life forms include a robotic bunny appearing at the launch event, in the Quarry's Igloo Pavilion, on Friday, July 3 at 8pm, dancing robots on Sunday July 5, from noon till 6pm, and a dodo takes a comic walkabout on Sunday 5 between noon and 4pm.
Visitors may also come face to face with artist Feng Ru Lee performing as her alter-ego Milee the Sheep. Milee represents the far more disturbing aspects of a post-human future, genetic engineering and mutating life-forms. She has also enlisted the help of a real sheep for the event.
See details of the Primordial Soup event here
See Sue Tortoise's Primordial photos here
By Shift Time reporter Lorna Green
30 June 2009
