September 24th - October 4th, 2015
----------------------------------------------------
Study in Motion is an ironic attempt at reversing the evolution of film technology. The initial aim of the work was to make a functional zoopraxiscope, which consists of a slide projector turned into a magic lantern, an electric motor, a transformer and several bicycle cogs. The projector shows a film in which the author rocks on a rocking horse in a children...read more
September 24th - October 4th, 2015
----------------------------------------------------
Study in Motion is an ironic attempt at reversing the evolution of film technology. The initial aim of the work was to make a functional zoopraxiscope, which consists of a slide projector turned into a magic lantern, an electric motor, a transformer and several bicycle cogs. The projector shows a film in which the author rocks on a rocking horse in a children’s playground. The action is shot with a digital camera, and then from the .avi format 126 digital images are cut out and printed in the form of physical photographs. Then the prints are photographed again in slide film, which is developed and then pasted onto a disk that in seven seconds makes one rotation around its axis and at a speed of 18 pictures per second shows a film that suggests the first projection of moving images of a galloping horse. The work lies at the border of functional projector and object/sculpture, i.e., the banality of the material shown in a sense cancels out the function of the actual machine and turns it into a sculpture the contents of which are of a citation nature, like its form, although at the beginning this was not the intention. At the beginning all that was wanted was to produce a projector capable of showing the kind of moving picture that people looked at 140 years ago. What is indicative for a comparison of the film Study in Motion with the films of Edward Muybridge is the environment. Muybridge worked on his image so as to reduce the distortion created because of the rudimentariness of the shutter of the projector, and so he re-photographed his images, and simplified them in the process. They were reduced to horse and rider, which because of the lack of any perspective are in motion indeed but are not going anywhere because they have no fixed point from which to move towards something and so they are galloping from nothing to nothing. On the other hand, in Study in Motion, this surrounding does exist, but the play horse in the playground, or course, is always in its place, and the movement is only figurative. If it does wish to ride off, every child riding it will have to imagine it for itself.
