Eadweard Muybridge (/ˌɛdwərd ˈmaɪbrɪdʒ/; 9 April 1830 – 8 May 1904, born Edward James Muggeridge) was an English photographer important for his pioneering work in photographic studies of motion, and early work in motion-picture projection.
n the 1880s, Muybridge entered a very productive period at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, producing over 100,000 images of animals and humans in motion, capturing what the human eye could not distinguish as separate movements. He spent much of his later years giving public lectures and demonstrations of his photography and early motion picture sequences, traveling back to England and Europe to publicise his work. He also edited and published compilations of his work, which greatly influenced visual artists and the developing fields of scientific and industrial photography.
He developed chemicals and photographic techniques that allowed him to capture images at 100’ths of a second. He was able to show slices of time that before cameras was unable to be detected by human perception.
His famous set of images of a horse at a gallop showed conclusively that at the point that the horse transfers power from the front feet to the back feet all of the horses feet are at that point are not in contact with the ground.
He went on to focus on thousands of images of humans, animals in motion.
Contemporary to Muybridge was Marey.
Étienne-Jules Marey (French: [maʁɛ]; 5 March 1830, Beaune, Côte-d’Or – 15 May 1904,[1] Paris) was a French scientist, physiologist and chronophotographer.
His work was significant in the development of cardiology, physical instrumentation, aviation, cinematography and the science of laboratory photography. He is widely considered to be a pioneer of photography and an influential pioneer of the history of cinema. He was also a pioneer in establishing a variety of graphical techniques for the display and interpretation of quantitative data from physiological measurement.[2]
Many of these early experiments were on the cusp between science and art. Film was seen as a powerful medium for close observation, a type of observation of the human that hadn’t before been possible.
It was taken up as an instrument of recording by ethnographers and new emerging fields within industrialisation. The idea of repetition of tasks, measuring peoples performance, efficiency, speed, mechanisation, were of interest to industrialists and investors.
Company’s like Ford teamed up with emerging fields of science like Time and Motion to examine in minute detail the repetitive tasks assigned to people to perform in factory production.
A time and motion study (or time-motion study) is a business efficiency technique combining the Time Study work of Frederick Winslow Taylor with the Motion Study work of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth (the same couple as is best known through the biographical 1950 film and book Cheaper by the Dozen). It is a major part of scientific management (Taylorism). After its first introduction, time study developed in the direction of establishing standard times, while motion study evolved into a technique for improving work methods. The two techniques became integrated and refined into a widely accepted method applicable to the improvement and upgrading of work systems. This integrated approach to work system improvement is known as methods engineering[1] and it is applied today to industrial as well as service organizations, including banks, schools and hospitals.[2]
The new tools of image capture became of interest to artists, the mechanisation of war seen to devastating effect in WW1 became a subject for new art movements from Dada to Surrealism.
Artists like Marcel Duchamp were well aware of these new scientific developments, how they were being used and how they might be critically thought about.
Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (French: Nu descendant un escalier n° 2) is a 1912 painting by Marcel Duchamp. The work is widely regarded as a Modernist classic and has become one of the most famous of its time. Before its first presentation at the Parisian 1912 Salon des Indépendants, it was rejected by the Cubists as too Futurist. Yet the work was exhibited with the same group at Galeries J. Dalmau, Exposició d’Art Cubista, in Barcelona, 20 April–10 May 1912,[1] and subsequently caused a huge stir during its exhibition at the 1913 Armory Show in New York.
The minute consideration of the body its movements became a pervasive concern of both scientists and artists. A consideration that we are still living through.
A playwright called Beckett produced an interesting theatre piece. The only visual element on the stage was a mouth lit so that it appeared isolated and disembodied.
The piece was called “Not I”
Kino will be a consideration of your own bodies as subjects of continual surveillance within the University setting.
The piece will be two minutes long and will be an experimental consideration of the points at which you and your body are documented, watched, and recorded. The images will be accompanied by a soundscape that takes as its starting points the sounds, room tones etc that you experience being part of the University organisation.
MA 21st Century Media Practice 2017 