Thedhu Ui Vadaan
By: Thuppi
Dhaalu Dhoores, soon to be Aaaveee resort is almost completed. The wood workers have been working day and night to finish their work close to the opening season. These young and hard working men who came to the island to do something completely different from woodworking, has in time come to learn the intricate art and now excel at it
THOSHI MESHUN
I am going to tell you a step by step story about a tree, imported locally from another atoll in the Maldives called Laamu, which is then transformed into a simple but intricate wooden table.
VADAAN GEAH GENDHIUN
These trees are first brought to the island in hundreds on a boat faring across the seas. Once it lands on the beach, it is then submerged under the salty waters for 24 hours so that the wood will be easier to work with. Once, the trunk has been peeled and smoothened, it is then taken into the wonderful workshop, which is then cut in the middle, into four equal halves making four even table legs. No part of a tree is wasted. The left over lumber is then used for decorating purposes. Even the roots of the tree is transformed into complex light holders.
PETROL KEEHUN
The idea of a GIF, of moving pictures without a sound, has always inspired me. Reminds me about the black and white silent movies from the early 1960’s. The whole process of woodworking on this island is the first time I’ve seen a final product be completed from scratch. I wanted to show the step by step production of a table.
BODU KEEHUN KEEHUN
After a lot of brainstorming, I decided to make my GIF into a more literal representation of steps and moving images. Which led me to do a flipbook from the GIF images I took. For example, the way a tree is changed into a piece of wood and into a table, made me think about the circle of life. Someday the table will break, wither and decay into the soil which will eventually grow another tree. Think of a way to incorporate the circle of life into my project by making a GIF into a flip book and finally into a video of the flipping images. Finally, my video will show the basic steps of wood working, from peeling the bark to cutting the wood to gluing the table legs together to form the table.
HILA KARUDHAAS ELHUN
I’ve always liked taking candid GIFs of my friends from an application on my phone and it turned out very interesting. That is what inspired me to take GIF’s of the processes that goes on in the wood work shop. Though at first it was hard for me to have an idea about how to present my GIF story, after a brain storming session with the very talented artists, we came up with flip books. So I printed the separate photos from my GIFS which includes 20 photos in 8 different steps. I had lots of help from my friends in the cutting and pasting process.
ISKOORU JEHUN
After my flip books were almost done, I went back to the carpentry and asked them if they could help me complete it. I had to bolt all the pages together. The carpenters were extremely nice and more than willing to help and even were very fascinated with what I was doing which uplifted me and inspired me even more. After the pages were drilled and bolted, I have made short clips of the flipping of the books, with the help of the videographer; Ahmed Aiham, so that these videos will in turn be made into short GIF video clips.