In an effort to prove his theory on persistence of vision to a wider, non-scientific audience, Joseph Plateau developed his first phenakistiscope (1832) depicting a dancer who performs a pirouette in 16 distinct steps, each of them separated by a…
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The Temporality of Seeing: Reconsidering the Origins of the Phenakistiscope
by Nicholas Miller • April 15, 2019 • 2 Comments
Media “archaeologies” often emphasize the technical similarities between nineteenth-century optical devices and the basic mechanism of film animation: both create the illusion of movement by deploying series images stroboscopically. The designation of such instruments as “pre-cinematic,” however, can be misleading.…