A couple of days ago, I was shown a youtube video of sand art, something I have never seen before, which I found extremely amazing. Sand art is also called sand animation and it is the creation of images with sand using one’s hands.
I was first amazed by the images that were created with the sand. The images were so precise and detailed that you would think took hours to create, yet it only took a few simple movements by the artist’s hands. While watching the video, it makes this art seem even more impressive because it seems that mistakes are bound to occur, yet the artist never makes a mistake. It is also amazing that the artist is able to create images over previous images without starting fresh. I wonder if the artist practiced with the same technique before or is it freestyle. This constant change of images is the reason for this art to be called sand animation.
Many times, this art is portrayed on top of a overhead projector so the animations can be seen clearer and it only makes sense with gravity and all.
From the moment I watched the video posted by Alexandra of Kseniya Simonova, I was amazed at the level of precision and detail that she possessed. I thought it was incredible that she looked like she was merely flicking around sand(something I never considered art unless u count those sand-arts you make at birthday parties). The things she was able to do with her sand I could never dream of doing with a pen or pencil. It impressed me so much that I showed my whole family, and as you can imagine, they loved it. After watching this video, I am again astonished by the wonder of Sand Art(not sand-arts). This video of Ilana Yahav has a much calmer feeling to it compared to Kseniya Simonova, but that’s to be expected due to the different themes/stories that they are \Sanding\ about. While their storylines are different, they both employ many of the same techniques such as, how they travel from one scene to the next and how they create human faces. After seeing this I wondered if there is some sort of Sand Art school where a person can learn the basics of this art form, if so sign me up! I also tried to be a good roommate and watch part of this video without sound, but found it hard to connect to what was happening. The music used as the background really adds to the piece and helps the viewer understand the mood at a given time. Without the sound I saw Yahav creating trees,fruits, people but I had no idea as to what emotion she was trying to evoke. It’s amazing that in this case, using another type of art to complement the performance can completely make or break it. This video really made my morning even though I wrongly expected to see Woody and Buzz made out of Sand.
I think this almost made me cry.
When you were a kid, did you ever have this activity where you put colored sand in a bottle? It’s more fun and creative than I’m making it sound, but the title reminded me of that, because we used to call it sand art.
I actually read your post AFTER viewing the video, and I have to say that I had your same mindset while viewing this; I was wondering whether this video had been edited or not, because as humans, we make mistakes. How did this artist move her hands so fluidly, yet not make a single mistake? Could she have messed up at any point and then undo her errors (and edit the video so that we wouldn’t know, like we learned in class today)? I’m not sure if you can correct errors in art such as this, but the precision is astounding.
I found the art most emotional at 1:07, when a finger was pointing to the man under the rainy umbrella; accompanied with the music, it just gave me the feeling of one man’s unfortunate life of melancholic mockery.
The transformation was astounding. I can see why they call it sand animation.
And I as well, expected to see Woody and Buzz made out of Sand in the end, with the song “You’ve got a friend in me” playing in the background.
Great find!
Amazing example. Of course, this was already noticed on August 31!