Barnaby Dixon’s Ingenious Hand Puppet

The puppet designer Barnaby Dixon spent a year and a half developing a hand puppet that borrows mechanisms normally reserved for marionettes. Operated with two hands, it can point, grasp small objects and — the hard part — appear to talk.

Dixon’s videos are as much the medium as the puppet. He performs the thing rather than demonstrating it, which is how a piece of engineering becomes a character. There is a second clip of it dancing, and it is worth the detour.

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