Dream of Pastures Zoopraxiscope: a bike-driven movie projector
October 2nd, 2008
Eadweard Muybridge was hired by Leland Stanford to answer the question if a horse had all four legs in the air at any time at a full gallop. Although in 1878 he had already proved this with a single photograph the following year he devised a more elaborate setup with twenty-four cameras setup over a twenty foot length triggered by the horse’s hoofs as it galloped past. The resulting photographs were widely published (and later the basis for a book by Stanford) and a popular culture sensation.
Realizing that he was onto something, Eadweard invented the Zoopraxiscope which projected images from a rotating glass disk to give the impression of motion - creating the first movie projector.
In 2008 Mitchell f Chan and Brad Hindson created A Dream of Pastures funded by Ontario Arts Council to be exhibited on the exterior of the Art Gallery of Ontario for Toronto’s Nuit Blanche All-Night contemporary art festival.
Mitchell says:
A Dream of Pastures is an interactive outdoor sculpture and animated light projection. On the exterior wall of the Art Gallery of Ontario, the ghostly form of a horse glows on the shadowy brick. On the ground several meters in front of it, a stationary bicycle beckons for investigation from the viewer.
As the viewer pedals the bicycle, he discovers that the phantom horse moves accordingly, animated by a mysterious system of projecting lights and turning gears. The viewer pedals more vigorously, the gears rotate more quickly, and the horse of light breaks into a gallop. Sitting in the saddle, the viewer creates a shadow that lines up with the horse, casting himself as a jockey in the projected world, galloping through the empty pastures of a fictitious world at an exhilarating pace.
It’s not clear to me if the connection is intentional or coincidence, but I’d like to think it’s a modern interactive interpretation of an important historical moment.
More information here
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- Riding the mechanical tiger Shiva
- Beautiful typewriter tins
- The Corpus Clock & Chronophage (Time Eater)
- Vacuum tubes made by hand
- Bending Light - ‘lensless’ photography
October 3rd, 2008 at 9:56 am
Good afternoon,
http://www.arts.on.ca
I happened to see this post and wanted to clarify that, while the Ontario Arts Council funded Mitchell’s work, it was not created for the Ontario Arts Council. OAC is an arts granting agency with over fifty funding programs for Ontario-based artists and arts organizations. Visit our website to learn more
October 3rd, 2008 at 10:18 am
Correction made, thank you!
October 7th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
Awesome! Thank you