The Museum Proper documentation video is up on vimeo! It has been quite some time since this project completed, and I had a wonderful time reliving the experience while cutting the footage together. If you weren't able to make it to the performance last June, here it is in it's full splendor. Do pass this link around to anyone who might be interested in seeing the project:

http://www.vimeo.com/bustedpuppet/museumproper

Thanks again,
Dax

We're all buried in last minute preparations at this point, but I thought I would sign back on to post once more before the show debuts - it's just three days away!

Last Sunday was the dress rehearsal, which went swimmingly. The puppets are in the workshop for some final adjustments and paint. I'm hoping I remembered everything! Wish us luck on Friday.

Also, the new website is up - please take a look if you haven't already: http://www.museumproper.com

The Museum Proper
at San Jose's 3rd Annual SubZERO Festival
on the street near San Salvador and South First St, downtown San Jose
Friday, June 4th from 6pm-midnight
(there will be 4 museum proper performances between 7pm and 11pm)

Yours,
Dax

Wow, this project has come such a long way so quickly. Within the last two weeks all 6 puppets have become functional, the musical score has been completed, and we've survived our first 4 rehearsals! There is a slight reprieve in the rehearsal schedule to allow the puppets to be repaired and taken to their finished, fleshed-out and painted state, so I've got a moment to post a few more pictures for your viewing pleasure! I can't wait to show the finished show to all of you - but I'm going to try to hold off on posting every possible photo of every puppet, if only to keep the suspense just a little bit ;)

We're quite close to having a complete show, and with just a few more weeks until the big day! We're setting up a booth at the Maker Faire in San Mateo on May 22nd/23rd in order to display the in-progress puppets. If you'd like to catch a glimpse of them, do come by. It seems that San Jose is already a-buzz about the SubZERO Festival on June 4th, so it's promising to be quite an event! If you're able to come down to see the show, and you have a video camera, we would love some help with the documentation!

Yours,
Dax

(photos by Moose)

I apologize for the long delay in posting an update on the project. I've been hard at work with the Bandersnatch, and was holding off until I could post some video of all the moving parts - but I just read a Mercury News article about the state of arts funding in Silicon Valley, and had to pause for a moment to appreciate that I am working on a funded arts project during a recession when other arts organizations are having so much trouble. The article, if you're a reader: http://bit.ly/ctwHgw

So thanks! Thanks so much! This last week has been especially wonderful, as I got a bunch of commissions out the door at the end of March in order to dedicate all of April to building - and now I get to build puppets all day long, with no interruptions! None! This is a first time in my life I've ever been able dedicate myself to a single project, and the feeling is rather epic.

At any rate, I've been posting a whole slew of photographs to the flickr stream over the last few weeks, if you've been keeping up, and will be posting a handful more tonight. The Bandersnatch skeleton is just a few days from being completed, and I expect to have the rigging together by the end of next week - which means a performable puppet skeleton is imminent! I'll be experimenting with bicycle brake cable for the first time, so wish me luck.

This last weekend I presented Corpus Callosum with detailed storyboards of the show, and they are full-steam ahead with writing the score. They are going to be swelling their ranks with new musicians in order to pull off what I believe will be a masterpiece of theatrical music composition. As a songwriter but not much of a composer myself, it always astonishes me the quality of the ideas that come out of these composers, right from the starting gate.

The finalized cast of puppeteers will be Qarly Canant, Susie Danzig, Stephanie Bailey, and myself. This is a fantastic lineup of experienced performers, and I am ever confident that they will be solid collaborators when we all come together in May to begin rehearsals. Of note, we're still looking for a stagehand/understudy, if you know of anyone who might be interested.

Please keep an eye on the flickr stream for more updates - and I'll be posting a video of a functional Bandersnatch within a week or two!

Yours,
Dax

I just finished the portable lighting unit for the show - the first prop to be entirely done. Hooray!

I've posted over a dozen pictures to the flickr stream, if you'd like to see it in all it's glorious angles ;)

More to come.

Dax

This is a belated thank you to everyone who's helped so far with the project! The fundraiser closed on Sunday night, and, as you can see, the project cleared $2300! Once again, it's such a pleasure to know we're going into this project with so much support. My thanks to all these generous donations, big and small, and to everyone who showed support in other ways!

As for an update: I've spent the beginning of the week doing menial organizing like laying out spreadsheets for budget and materials and setting up a separate bank account, so I apologize that I haven't had anything exciting to post yet ;). This afternoon, however, I took my materials list for the Bandersnatch puppet down to the hardware store, and have come back with treasure! Again, I cannot really express how good it feels to have a real budget to purchase materials, and I thought of all of you while I was picking out the hardware. In addition, we've just signed on puppeteer Susie Danzig to the project, which is incredibly exciting - Susie is a truly gifted puppeteer who has been working, notably, with San Francisco's Lunatique Fantastique forever. Corpus Callosum had our first big meeting about the musical score last night, and everyone is looking forward to working on the piece. I am also starting to discuss logistics with the SubZERO Festival organizers, which means that it is also time for me to draw up the final round of storyboards! Look for those soon on the Museum Proper Flickr stream!

And, of course, now I'm going to send you a whole bunch of stuff :). For those of you who will be receiving Museum Proper Collages, I've already begun a pile of cardboard scraps, which is rapidly growing. I predict it could take a month or so of working on the puppets before I'll have enough scraps from the project to make collages for all 19 of you, so look for those in April! To my great excitement, the Museum Proper sketchbook has been accepted to the KALEID Gallery Sketchbook exhibition this month - the entire sketchbook, along with some other original watercolors, will be on public display through the end of March. For those of you who I am sending sketchbook pages to, you can expect to receive them in early April as well. As stated above, the storyboards are coming up, and will be going out shortly, and I will be sending along the concept art watercolors as soon as I can find suitable packaging! I love giving gifts, especially through the mail, and so it makes me quite happy to be able to send these "rewards" out - almost as much as making the puppets themselves :).

Oh yes, and if you would like to come see the sketchbook in the gallery, the opening is from 5-7PM this Friday at KALEID, 88 S Fourth St, San Jose, CA - the gallery has daytime hours through March 26th. I will be in attendance, if you would like to stop by to say hello! If you end up in San Jose this Friday for that event, too, I have been doing a live-painting for the Cinequest film festival all week, and the still-wet canvas will be on display at Camera 12 on 2nd Street.

Yours,
Dax

So the project has just cleared $2000, which is wonderful and amazing. I am so glad that funds can be raised in such a way in this day and age, and am feeling quite lucky to be able to go ahead with such an adventurous project.

There will be 10 more days to make donations, so please keep passing the video around. If we can get to $2500, I can ensure that all the puppeteers get a reasonable stipend for all their work.

Also, I've finished the first prototype, which is a 1:10 cardboard model of the Bandersnatch (the big puppet)! I was trying to figure out how to make an apparatus for the enormous head that would give it the most amount of life. I spent a lot of time pouring over Handspring's War Horse videos on youtube, frame by frame, hoping that they would have some genius I could steal - but ended up figuring that I would need a fairly different approach from theirs. The problems were solved pretty easily once I got to building, and it looks like I'll only need two ball-joints, supplemented by a few bungee cords (I love when things are simple...). I'm probably going to get a little more adventurous and build the final head 50% larger than it is on the model. While I was at the workbench, I went ahead and finished the entire model, just to make sure that my thoughts for the legs and tail were reasonable - which it looks like they are. I've shot a short video of the model, if you'd like to see how the thing will move!

I can't wait for March when I can go out and get materials for the full-size puppet!

From the Workshop Proper,
Dax

At 10:45PM PST last night The Museum Proper cleared it's first goal of $1300 - less than 48 hours after uploading the video! I'm still giddy knowing for sure that the project will be happening. I'm personally quite moved by the enormous and enthusiastic support of the project, and I know my collaborators feel similarly. My excitement is not only because there is apparently so much interest in seeing a puppet project take the streets, but also because this success is a testament to the viability of non-commercial artwork. My deepest thanks.

Now that I have the promise of a materials budget, I will be taking a bit of initiative to start building prototypes for the different apparatuses that will be involved. Though the fund raiser will continue through the end of the month (and we will not be collecting any of the money from donors until then), I'm far too eager to get started with the building. I will be posting photos of the prototypes to this Kickstarter Updates blog, as well as to the flickr stream ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/28515246@N02/sets/72157623223930567/ ).

And it's wonderful that we continue to receive donations (while I was writing this, the project cleared $1400)! As I mentioned before, if we raise another few hundred dollars we'll be able to cover ourselves in case of construction catastrophe, which is all part of the building process. After that, any additional donations will create stipends for the many people working on the project (puppeteers, musicians, builders), to ensure that we will all be here for future projects. As with all art projects this is a labor of love, although it is still our dream that we might one day make a living doing this work. So please keep spreading the word about the project, showing the video to everyone you know - The Museum Proper greatest victory will be proving that independent puppetry is a respectable career.

Thank you all.
Dax