The Explanation
(for those who require one)

And, of course, that is what all of this is -- all of this: the one song, ever changing, ever reincarnated, that speaks somehow from and to and for that which is ineffable within us and without us, that is both prayer and deliverance, folly and wisdom, that inspires us to dance or smile or simply to go on, senselessly, incomprehensibly, beatifically, in the face of mortality and the truth that our lives are more ill-writ, ill-rhymed and fleeting than any song, except perhaps those songs -- that song, endlesly reincarnated -- born of that truth, be it the moon and June of that truth, or the wordless blue moan, or the rotgut or the elegant poetry of it. That nameless black-hulled ship of Ulysses, that long black train, that Terraplane, that mystery train, that Rocket '88', that Buick 6 -- same journey, same miracle, same end and endlessness."
-- Nick Tosches, Where Dead Voices Gather

The Archaeology of Cinema #2


Zoöpraxiscope
(Eadweard Muybridge; 1879)

One of the earliest moving image devices known to man (preceded mainly by the Zoetrope), Muybridge's Zoöpraxiscope was the first to create the illusion of movement by showing still photographs in rapid succession. It was modified in 1892. This is the original.
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2 comments:

swac said...

For some reason I can't read this entry without hearing Philip Glass music in my head.

"doodley DOODLEY doodley DOODLEY doodley DOODLEY..." ad nauseum

March 07, 2005 6:37 PM
Rob said...

As a starving art student, I was fascinated by Eadweard Muybridge's sequential motion studies, and spent countless hours looking at various sequences. The play of light on muscles of the human body in motion still thrills me.

BCNU

March 07, 2005 11:22 PM

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