aleia murawski and sam copeland create miniature worlds for their pet snails

chicago-based creative duo aleia murawski and samuel copeland create elaborately detailed miniature worlds for their pet snails. taking inspiration from TV dramas and movies, the dioramic designs feature lofty city apartments, white picket fences, and tiny burnt out cigarettes.

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by aleia (@aleia) on Jul 18, 2018 at 7:43am PDT

made from random items that murawski and copeland find on walks or driving around, each miniature tells a different story of one or both of their pet snails — the skateboarding highschooler, the burnt-out office worker, an alien abduction. some reflect a nostalgic representation of middle-class suburban america whilst others dark themes of rampant commercialism.

images aleia murawski and samuel copeland

the sets are used to capture still images and short films. as you can imagine, one of the trickiest parts of the ongoing project is directing the snails. to tease them into the right place, the pair position cucumbers behind the sets’ tiny objects to encourages the snails movement.

video by sub pop

last year, the duo created an entire neighborhood to be used in a music video project for bully. a day-in-the-life of an extra sluggish snail. it follows a day in the life of a snail who wakes up, makes coffee, eats breakfast, takes a shower, playa video games, makes dinner, falls in love and breaks up…slowly.

in an interview with it’s nice that, murawski stated that this whole project started when copeland found the snails while was visiting his parents in central illinois: ‘we made a terrarium for them…and around the same time, we started making miniature scenes together. at first, we were keeping them as pets and just loved looking at them every day. then we realized, the sets we were making were roughly snail-sized and we loved the idea of animating these rooms.’

made from random items that murawski and copeland find on walks or driving around, each miniature tells a different story: the skateboarding highschooler, the burnt-out office worker, an alien abduction. some reflect a nostalgic representation of middle-class suburban america whilst others dark themes of rampant commercialism.

project info

artists: aleia murawski and samuel copeland