Clogs’ album
We’re back! Well almost… As of Monday we will resume work behind our desks at the studio, after a lovely month of sunshine and holidays. In the mean time we have designed a bit of stage decoration for the Trailerpark Festival, which is beginning tonight! Don’t miss it – there will be lots and lots of fantastic bands playing and beautiful artwork and sculptures to see. Hope to meet you there!
Our stage design is a forest of abstract shapes made of wood, painted white on the top and different colours on the back. With the white side up, it’ll be possible to project visuals on the shapes, while hopefully the colours on the back will create interesting effects when lit from beneath.
Bo Benzon from Arkitekturministeriet is the technical mastermind behind the wood construction, and thanks to happy helpers at the festival it was possible to paint all 67 shapes in 2 days…
Looking forward to see how it looks when all the shapes are up! Photos by Rasmus Stolberg
0 Comments Arkitekturministeriet, Bo Benzon, Stage design, Trailerpark Festival
By the way, we have now uploaded some more photos and information about our workshop at LAFA on our website!
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Our time at LAFA is nearly up. The workshop ended yesterday, where all 80 students brought their food plate to the students’ cafeteria where we set up a gigantic dinner feast of colourful meals. The table was almost 45 meters long! We then had to chose which students to give special awards – something they seem to like a lot in China. So we did as we were told, although this goes a little against Danish teaching spirit as we know it. When we get home we’ll upload photos of the whole workshop on our website.
Today we went on a sightseeing trip organised by Miss Yu from LAFA’s Shenyang campus. We were taken on a 2 hour drive to a neighboring district, where Miss Yu’s parents live. Actually we weren’t quite sure what was going on as the driver got lost several times, but when we reached the destination and Miss Yu’s mother handed us swimming suits with matching swimming hats, we knew that we were in for another special experience! And true enough, the next minute we found ourselves submerged in a hot spring, in matching retro swimsuits and hats. None of the local guests hesitated to stare at us curiously, and consequently Mu is now in the possession of a handful of potentially dangerous photos. After the hot bath, we went to have a delicious huge lunch with Miss Yu’s parents. They had been preparing it for a week, and we were very touched by their kindness and hospitality.
Later there was an award ceremony at the packaging studio, where we gave the students awards in 6 different categories – it was quite like the Oscars! The president of LAFA, Mr. Sun Ming, came by and it was a great pleasure meeting him. Afterwards there was a lovely buffet and a lot of group photographing with the students. Now our cheeks hurt from smiling to the cameras.
Sweet Mu got all teary at dinner, thinking about our departure tomorrow. “Time is frozen and I have so many memories” he philosophically stated. We will surely miss him! We make a brilliant trio.
Just now a crazy thunderstorm broke out, so hopefully we can fly to Beijing tomorrow.
Student work
Student work
Student work in the cafeteria
Paper dinner for 80!
Cheers!
Here we are in yet another group photo, this time with Mu, Miss Yu and her parents
Today we got to see all of the students’ amazing homework assignments of carefully folded paper food, and we gave most of them a little talk about which direction to take their project. We were so impressed by their work! All the students are working on individual paper-meals, and tomorrow we are going to set up a huge dinner table for 80 in the students’ cafeteria. Hopefully this will result in a striking installation and some good photographs.
For lunch we discovered a whole new part of LAFA campus: an underground shopping mall and food court. This school is huge! And later Mu and Dong took us to Discovery Land, an amusement park close to campus. We tried some different rides, but stayed clear of the wild ones, as we were told that the roller-coaster recently ran wild and wouldn’t stop for 25 minutes, resulting in cascades of vomit. Brave Mu is doing such a good job in taking care of us – he even took the lead inside the haunted house, warding off all danger with a careful little voice saying “Hello Ghost?” while the rest of us followed cautiously behind. We were given 3D glasses at the entrance, only to discover that everything in there was three dimensional anyway and the only purpose they seemed to serve was to blind our left eyes.
Examples of paper meals folded by our students at the Packaging Design department. So nice!
Detail of paper food
Some of the students’ other work – they they are experts in folding paper
Students in class
We tried this one, much fun!
Our new press photo?
Today we got up very early and had breakfast at the LAFA campus. We were then driven to the Polytechnic University of Dalian, which has a very interesting design and arts school. We got to visit a lot of different studios there, and especially the ceramic and sculpture studios were really exciting to see!
Here we gave our first lecture which was a very nice but strange experience, since very few actually understood what we said. Mu had to translate everything, and since we don’t speak Chinese, that could be anything! Afterwards it was like we were rockstars and we were asked to sign autographs.
Back at the LAFA campus, we held another lecture in the package design studio. Now we are very tired, so off to our big beds with plastic sheets. Tomorrow our workshop will begin and we are looking forward to really meeting the students and talking with them.
The ceramics department at Dalian Polytechnic University
Sculpture students
Again a glorious lunch, this time with the dean and teachers of Dalian Polytechnic
If you’re a lover of seafood and weird creatures, Dalian is the place for you. You can even get silk worms and huge frogs. Of course they are alive when you order them and then prepared for you… we didn’t dare though.
HOT v.2! This poster was designed by one of the teachers, Professor Yuling. We like this poster very much.
Group photos are a big thing in China. Here we are with Mu, the dean of Dalian Polytechnic Professor Ren, Professor Wang and Professor Yuling in front of one of the dean’s beautiful paintings.
First lecture at Dalian Polytechnic. The crowd is eagerly anticipating our words… Professor Wang fell asleep.
Second lecture at LAFA campus.
We are in China!
We arrived safely yesterday, and were greeted with flowers at Shenyang airport by Mu Xulong, the MA student at LAFA who initially invited us to come here. He is a huge fan of our work – and he knows everything about us! If we try to tell him something, he already knows… It’s quite incredible. When we got to the academy we had a welcome dinner with Professor Yafei Wang, a famous Chinese designer. After a fair deal of skepticism towards our closet vegetarianism they tuned into our needs and had extra vegetables delivered to the table. We feel very well taken care of here! Proffesor Wang also gave us tons of Chinese tea and a special tea pot which will be used all the time when we get back.
Today we did a guest talk at Lafa campus, for the students of visual communication, both under graduate and post graduate students. Most do not speak English but Mu did a fine job of translating our words. Later we were driven to the Dalian part of LAFA’s campus which is situated 5 hours’ drive south of Shenyang. Once again we received an overwhelmingly warm welcome, and had a delicious dinner with some of the professors, teachers and students. This campus seems huge – it will be interesting to see it in day light!
With Mu in front of a stone engraved with the LAFA motto: ‘Study hard!’
Professor Wang’s tea machine
At the guest talk
Lunch with students and Professor Wang
No, it’s not risengrød, it’s tofu!
Mu studying Hvass&Hannibal history
Hot!
Welcome dinner at Dalian campus
Our rooms are huge!
0 Comments China, LAFA, Luxun Academy of Fine Arts, Mu Xulong, Yafei Wang
The Danish National Chamber Orchestra
Posted by HvassHannibal on May 18th 2010 in Projects, Work in progress
We are currently busy working with the Danish National Chamber Orchestra, creating some accessories that they can wear at their shows and concerts, and also some decorative elements for the stage. We have worked with the orchestra before, when they performed with Efterklang in 2008. Back then we designed costumes for the band, and did stage design as well.
We initially started experimenting with rope in all sizes and colours, tying hundreds of knots and monkey fists, but we have now settled for a more discrete and subtle look with elements of spraypainted wood and plexiglas. We have to be done before we leave for China on Friday, which leaves little time for packing suitcases, let alone preparing a workshop for 80 students. So we are kind of busy here… but in a good way!
For now here’s a photo of our desktop at the studio.
On another note, if there’s anything you would be interested in seeing more of on our blog, please leave a comment or send us a mail. Blogging is relatively new to us, so any feedback would be great.
“If I gave you French underwear for your birthday, would you let me borrow it?” – ”I’m that guy, from that famous band, you know…” – “I closed (kissed) an HB10 (hot babe rated 10) last Saturday, but I don’t want an LTR (long term relationship) so I just said LJBF (let’s just be friends)”
We recently finished a new illustration for a story about the ‘art of seduction’. The article is about seduction in various contexts: how to sell yourself, or your product and how to attract customers – or the opposite sex! In the story there’s an interview with a group of young men who are all part of an online community where they share tricks and theories on how to seduce (mostly) women. We thought this was really interesting and funny… and apparently there are even equations to figure out how big your chance is to get together with a hot lady.
If you want some entertaining reading on the subject visit The Game Online (in Danish) or try to understand the Gunwitch Method
Get 15% off your favourite Hvass&Hannibal poster
Posted by HvassHannibal on April 11th 2010 in Projects
We are happy to announce that we are going to China! We have been invited to Luxun Academy of Fine Arts (LAFA) in Shenyang to do a guest talk and a workshop, and we will probably also be visiting some other schools in the area. LAFA is one of the top art academies in China with varieties of specialties and departments and excellent academic staff, according to Saatchi Gallery’s website. We are very honoured to have received this invitation and also exited to finally have settled on a date, as we’ve been planning this trip for nearly a year now, since we were first contacted by LAFA student Mu Xulong.
We will be traveling end of May 2010, and after staying at the school for one week, we will spend a few days in Beijing. If anyone knows some interesting places we should go and see in Beijing, please leave a comment!
You can read a little more about the school on Saatchi Gallery’s website or visit the school’s own website here, but you won’t get very far if you don’t read Chinese.