Vesper No. 1
| Supervenice | Fall-Winter 2019
Alessandra Pagliano
Zootropio
The Zoetrope is an instrument designed by the
British mathematician William George Horner, in 1834, to provide the optical
effect of images (drawings) in motion. It was born in the experimental climate
before the birth of the cinema, which had already led to the invention of the
Thaumatrope (1825), the Anorthoscope (1828) and the Phenachistoscope (1832).
The device consists of a hollow cylinder with loopholes; along the intrados was
placed a series of drawings in sequence. The cylinder rotated around its
vertical axis and the observers, looking at the drawings through the rapid
succession of loopholes, perceived the illusion that those static images made
real movements. The instrument is based on the optical phenomena known as
persistence of vision, described in 1829 by Joseph Plateau, who affirmed that
human eye holds a perceived image for a few fractions of a second, even after
its disappearance.
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