Tuesday, January 04, 2011

Muybridge Exhibition - Tate Britain

I was walking in the tube - I can't remember whether it was the time after my xmas lunch with various editors or after our Christmas party, when I saw this photo on a poster. I was fascinated, I stopped to look at the images. I loved it, it was intriguing and different, pictures of people or animals in motion - 'moving pictures'.

Eadweard Muybridge lived in the 19th century and was from Kingston - if I had bothered visiting the local museum, I would have known that!

His motivation was to prove that a horse could fly - not as crazy as it sounds - he reckoned that in the galoping motion, a horse had all four hoves off the ground, but the motion was too quick for the human eye to capture.

So he set up an elaborate device to photograph a motion under three different angles - he also invited a device - called a zoopraxiscope to show played the motion pictures in a form of animation - a few years before film strips were invented.
(For the record, apparently, the first device ever invented was in 1870 and was called a Praxinoscope, while Myubridge's Zoopraxiscope was invented in 1878 - both devices were at the origin of cinema).


Muybridge not only proved that a horse is indeed airborne for a split second but more extraordinarily, what he really achieved despite himself is 'motion pictures', which he referred to as locomotion or moving-picture. His method is the 'technology' that was used in shooting the film the Matrix. So there, you all learned something new :)

8 comments:

VV said...

Cool, I love learning new things. I think the Tate was closed when I was in London a few years back, so I never got to see any of the exhibits then. I did go to the British Museum. I believe that's where I saw the Da Vinci notebooks. Truly fascinating. I also went to the Imperial War Museum, also a great place to visit. They had a display on genocides which is an interest of mine, so we stayed until they closed looking over everything. I liked their WWII bomb shelter experience. Quite interesting!

La Cremiere said...

Thanks VV, there are two Tate museums, Tate Britain, which exhibits English and British artists and Tate Modern, which exhibits everything else. I regularly go to the Tate Modern, but it was my first time in 5 years that I'd been to Tate Britain - I did not like any other arts exhibited - nothing captured my imagination.

Full-On-Forward said...

Those have fascinated me for years! Along with the one about the Cat walking on a suspension Bridge!!

LOL--I'll let you Google that if you don't already know it!

Great Work!!

PS: My Hometown of Plant City Fl, is know as the World's Winter Strawberry Capital--replete with "The Strawberry Festival": which in my day drew about 10,000 people--now it is up to 100,000!!!

AWESOME BLOG!!!!


John

Unknown said...

This is great...I love learning about the various reasonings behind the art I see and am drawn too!

Thanks for commenting on my blog and yes, sadly they have to remove the staples and trust me I am so NOT looking forward to that!!!

xo G

by Danie said...

Je ne sais pas comment tu fais: Tu as a peine recommence a bloguer, que hop voila deja plein de nouveaux amis-blog. Tu as le chic pour te faire des amis, et de nouvelles connaissances, c'est super.
Tres bien Muybridge a la Tate Britain-en-face-de-la-passerelle.
J'aime bien la passerelle, surtout quand il fait beau et qu'il n'y a pas de vent.

Diva's Thoughts said...

Wow! very cool indeed.

tweetey30 said...

I love museums..they are so cool..

Libellule said...

Et moi, je pensais que les frères Lumière étaient à l'origine du cinéma!!!

J'espère que ton année est partie de bon pied!

A tout bientôt!