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Is There Anyone Who Hasn’t Seen This?


Kseniya Simonova’s remarkable sand painting video has been viewed by eight million people, so I’m guessing a lot of you have already seen it, but just in case, here it is one more time.

There’s this weird thing that happens where if enough people recommend a link to me, I figure I don’t need to blog about it, because everyone has already seen it. Still, eight million out of six billion isn’t exactly full saturation.

Some of the recommendations came with an “is this comics?” heading, prompting my usual answer: “I don’t think so, but it’s still cool!”

We’re getting close to the end of a decade and a lot of people have been trying to sum up the experience. Short of putting “B.O.B.” on endless repeat, I think a big part of what’s made this decade interesting can be summed up pretty nicely in the phrase “Ukraine’s Got Talent.”


Discussion (10)¬

  1. Antoine says:

    This is truly amazing!

    Scott, I never saw that before, so this post wasn’t for nothing 😛

    But to the question about comic, well she is drawing and she does tell a story!

    • Scott says:

      She does both, though I don’t think that’s what makes comics comics.

      But hey, if it feels like comics to you, don’t let me talk you out of it.

      Contrary to popular belief, I’m not really that interested in policing the definition fence. (That sort of thing gets old fast.) Comics or not, some things are just plain cool.

    • tater tot says:

      juxaposed pictorial images in deliberate sequence, antione

  2. Wood says:

    Hey, this is totally unrelated, but I thought it might interest you.

    Boulet, the star of the French “Blogs-BD” scene is in the process of translating the archives of his blog in English. You can start reading them here :

    http://www.bouletcorp.com/blogen/

    For the moment there are only 3 entries up, but he’s been comic-blogging since 2004, so it’s going to be a while before he catches up.

    Hint : for each entry, there’s a bonus picture in the comments.

    The archive of this blog have been published in book form by Delcourt (in French, of course) under the title “notes”.

    http://www.editions-delcourt.fr/catalogue/bd/notes_1_born_to_be_a_larve

  3. fedora says:

    I haven’t seen this either, thanks for the tip, I love to watch artists in process in general. However I do prefer things a little less ‘the big magician pulls out the rabbit from the hat, woo’ (I’m not sure if this makes any sense). Anyway, this video made me remember the art group called RinpaEshidan, if you want see something amazing you should check out their videos on youtube (if you haven’t already).

  4. Box Brown says:

    While I think this is amazing and I see how some of the skills she uses would be compatible with comics, I would put this in the category of performance art. Truly amazing, though. I think some singing cowboys won America’s Got Talent.

    • Awesome.

      “performance art.” That’s a safe bet, since that’s the term people use to describe just about any artistic performance that doesn’t fit the conventions of more traditional art forms.

      You know what I would call it? “person-makes-pictures-using-sand-on-an-illuminated-screen.”

      or maybe “incredibly-talented-person-makes-awesome-pictures-using-sand-on-an-illuminated-screen.”

      But enough on what to call it, let’s talk ABOUT it. I absolutely LOVED her ability to shade by lightly tossing sand.

      The performance reminded be a lot of people who post time-lapse photo-shop creations.

      • Will Curwin says:

        Scott, I hadn’t seen it and Matt, I argee this is performance art.

      • Fedora says:

        ‘The performance reminded be a lot of people who post time-lapse photo-shop creations.’ Is that for Rinpa? Are you sure it’s photo shop timelapse? I always thought it’s simply a continous art process being filmed. I’m not being sarcastic, I really am curious.

        • I actually didn’t know what Rinpa was, so I looked it up on Youtube and found:
          http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHeX_91LGDU
          Which also reminded me of time-lapse photo-shop creations (pardon the typo in my previous entry)
          But what makes the sand animation really cool (or any comparable live performance art) is that she is creating the images at that speed without the aid of time lapse.