Muybridge work is influential. Time in motion is represented in photographic sequence. He paved the way for the sense perceptory illusion of movement using photography.
The “grid composition” presentation of his images in photo form are intriguing . This moves the eye along horizontally, but then breaks the flow of movement when the images finish and continue on the line below. Why didn’t he print them all in a horizontal line? The eye movement mimics the movements of reading, maybe he was using the natural/learned physiology of reading to familiarise the viewer. While the zoopraxiscope presents a continuous flow of movement, i enjoy this break, i think it breaks the engagement and breaks the continuum of time when the eye moves to the new line causing a time-lag.
Not only is he the precursor to modern cinema, with the zoopraxiscope projecting his images in succession with the illusion of movement. I am drawn to the process of distorting the image and projecting it in order for it to look real.
I am fascinated by the eye’s movement perceiving motion and the brains ability to delude itself and create movement out of still images. My work relied on the eye, by agency of the viewer, to move in order to see the illusion of movement that is created by film. To think that his images were initially seen as falsities shows the ability to change perception of the masses through media and technology.
Also, incredible side-notes that pre-photography he suffered a major head injury, his behavior became “eccentric” and that he pleaded insanity in the murder of his wife’s lover and acquitted on the grounds of ‘justifiable homicide’.
Sol Le Witt’s Muybridge I and II is a titillating development of the Muybridge presentation and technique, though highly patriarchal and voyeuristic and of the times/ creating a keyhole type glimpse of the naked female in motion, presumably ‘unawares’ of this looked-at-ness (though it’s hard to ascertain from images online). It showed perhaps how the scientific-like presentation and idea of documenting through photography can evolve through the simple change in shape, from grid to circular.