AFTER MUYBRIDGE
INTERACTIVE WEB PROJECT [1997] - VIDEO [2000/2004] - Loop

After Muybridge can be called Digital Praxiniscope. Using various series by Eadweard Muybridge (1), the individual images were taken out of any scientific context and situated as motifs in open space. Our intention was to examine what pictures arise in the time and space between the image and the film.

The first adaptation for the internet, After Muybridge V1 - 1997, created a montage of the individual images as a long panorama and then transformed by means of various programs into a Quicktime VR Panorama movie (2). Like in a Praxiniscope, the user was able to control the speed of the movements along the horizontal axis, which at highest speed created the optical illusion of moving image.

Versions 2 and 3 for DVD were created using animation software that can be controlled through programming. The individual images were linearly accelerated along the horizontal axis (except the bird, where we used the vertical axis) to reanimate them. As in a praxinoscope, the accelerated presentation recreates the impression of the "original" time sequence. The intermediate phases and the optical ullusion that arise as a result of the slow acceleration resemble the style of photography influenced by Etienne-Jules Marey (3).

(1) Eadweard Muybridge, Human and Animal Locomotion, 1887.
(2) http://www.apple.com/quicktime. Quicktime VR was invented by Apple at the end of 1980s to allow users to navigate through virtual space with a mouse and a computer. Using a computer program the individual images are combined to produce a panorama and then manipulated so that the viewer sees the images as an artificial space. This technology requires the individual images as a model, and these were usually produced with a camera on a special tripod that turns around its own axis a number of degrees at a time.
(3) Etienne-Jules Marey: http://www.expo-marey.com



VIDEO EXCERPT [2:00 min. - MP4]