Tuesday, September 18, 2012

The Time that Douglas Adams Met Jim Henson

Mental Floss | By Chris Higgins

Kermit and Dr. Bunsen Honeydew in the digitally created world of the Muppet Institute of Technology, 1985

Adams had been working with the Henson team that year [1985] on the Muppet Institute of Technology project. Collaborating with Digital Productions (the computer animation people), Chris Cerf, Jon Stone, Joe Bailey, Mark Salzman and Douglas Adams, Jim’s goal was to raise awareness about the potential for personal computer use and dispel fears about their complexity. In a one-hour television special, the familiar Muppets would (according to the pitch material), “spark the public’s interest in computing,” in an entertaining fashion, highlighting all sorts of hardware and software being used in special effects, digital animation, and robotics. Viewers would get a tour of the fictional institute – a series of computer-generated rooms manipulated by the dean, Dr. Bunsen Honeydew, and stumble on various characters taking advantage of computers’ capabilities. Fozzie, for example, would be hard at work in the “Department of Artificial Stupidity,” proving that computers are only as funny as the bears that program them. Hinting at what would come in The Jim Henson Hour, viewers, “…might even see Jim Henson himself using an input device called a ‘Waldo’ to manipulate a digitally-controlled puppet.”

Read the full text here: http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/141878#ixzz26qJ05BaE
--brought to you by mental_floss!

No comments:

Post a Comment