We think this little number by a black-and-white clad chorus line will brighten everyone’s day. The dance is called the Strumpfhosentanz, which roughly translates from the German as “the sock trousers dance.” It’s often performed by a male lineup, with members literally linked together by shared pairs of tights. You can watch a number of versions on Youtube, but we think this video really nails the optical illusion created by the dance. Thanks to Raya Bodnarchuk for sending us this link when it went viral last month. Music is by the folk-rock polka band Hess.

There is more and more stuff being recycled these days, but in Paraguay it’s taking a particularly interesting form at the Cateura landfill. Here parents support their families by picking through the trash, looking for materials that can be resold. Favio Chavez, a social worker and music teacher, was working for an environmental group teaching the trash-pickers about safety issues. At the same time he opened a small music school for the trash-pickers’ children, but they only had five instruments among them and the kids grew bored. Nicolas Gomez, a carpenter and one of the trash-pickers, was asked by Chavez if he could devise some instruments from recycled materials. He started by building a drum, then moved on to making other instruments. X-ray film became drum heads, cans became violins and flutes, bottle caps became saxophone keys. Now the LandFill Harmonic is on tour and coming to Arizona’s Musical Instrument Museum this year. It’s such a creative way to educate, inspire, and provide skills that will change these children’s lives. Watch a video of the Orchestra of Instruments Recycled From Cateura.

We’re always impressed when a bureaucratic office does something edgy and out of the ordinary, so we were delighted by the emergency preparedness video that the Metropolitan Borough of Kirkless in the United Kingdom produced. Created by Argentinian animator and videographer Joaquin Ferronato, the video advises Kirkless citizens on procedures to follow in emergency weather situations, from not sheltering under trees to not wading in dirty water. To watch the video, click here.

1833 “McLean’s Optical Illusions; or, Magic Panorama” (early animations)

Chalk board animations bring to mind earlier forms of “motion pictures” such as phenakistiscopes and zoetropes. The phenakistiscope had two spinning disks on a handle that spun in the same direction. A circular card with a series of sequential pictures was attached to one disk and viewed through slots in the second disk while reflected in a mirror. Persistance of motion made the images appear to move. A few years later, the phenakistiscope was replaced by the zoetrope, which more than one person could view at a time and which didn’t require a mirror.

EARLY DAYS OF ANIMATION

Photographer Yanni Kronenberg and animator Lucinda Schreiber have collaborated on this magical stop-action video of chalk board drawings set to the song Autumn Story by Firekites. A lyrical series of images drawn and then erased to make way for each subsequent picture, the animation’s elegant simplicity belies the complexity of its production. Kronenberg is an award-winning photographer and videographer living in Sydney, while fellow Australian Schreiber first became known for her short film done as a graduate animation student, titled The Goat That Ate Me. Visit their web sites to see more of their work.

Graphic designer and calligrapher Sabeena Karnick, working in Mumbai India, has created a beautiful paper alphabet using a technique called “quilling.” Paper quilling has been around since the Renaissance when French and Italian nuns and monks used strips cut from the edges of guilded books to decorate book covers and other objects. These paper strips were rolled into shapes and glued together to create complex images and patterns. Later in the 18th-century European “ladies of leisure” practiced quilling when it was considered one of the few arts not too taxing on their delicate minds. Quilling was also practiced in America during colonial times. To learn more about the process of quilling visit these web sites: www.makezine.com and en.wikipedia.org

It may surprise some, but Washington, DC, has a funky, alternative side, and yesterday it was on grand display at the 26th annual Halloween High Heel Race. Guys in drag (and some women in costume, too) vamped their way down 17th Street in the Dupont Circle neighborhood for two hours before the race was run, posing for photos with spectators and giving news interviews to the press. Most wore heels of varying heights, many spiked and VERY high. The race itself included runners, walkers, and those who casually sashayed  to the finish line. Usually held on the Tuesday before Halloween, the race was postponed this year due to Hurricane Sandy, but thankfully not cancelled.

From early childhood, London artist Marc Hagan-Guirey has been a huge fan of horror movies. He began working with kirigami (the Japanese art of cutting an image from a single piece of paper) by designing a model of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Ennis House in Los Angeles, but then gravitated to more spooky edifices with a design for the house that served as the set in the Adams Family television show. From there he’s moved on to create a Horrorgami Overlook Hotel (The Shining), The Amityville House, and the MacNeil house from The Exorcist. He has plans to do more, and has a show coming up in November at Gallery One-and-a-Half in London. A video of the artist and his work is at this link. Thanks to Betsy Rubinstein for bringing these horrors to our attention.