The lecture about screens and the role that they have played in the way we watch and engage with media got me thinking about the elephant in the room – porn.
I wanted to try making a zoetrope and decided to use an image from a non-descript video of a man enjoying himself.
I have a longstanding interest in trying to be more critical about sexual pleasure and how it is stigmatised in every day conversation. I think this shuts down opportunities for conversation about something that a large marjority of people are interested in talking about.
Process
The first challenge was working out how to capture the small amount of frames needed to put inside the zoetrope. Enough that it would make it small and visible, but also allow the illusion of moving to work.
I started by choosing a representative piece of the video and edited the lighting and increased the contrast in Premier Pro.
I then exported part of the video as images and then started picking every 12th image.
I quickly realised this was not very efficient!
I found a way to reduce the framerate of the video and the extracted a much smaller amount of images – much easier to work with.
I ended up with a strip that I divided on a piece of card which I turned into a circle. The image has been blurred deliberately.
Below is the first attempt at getting the zoetrope to work. I stuck it on a paper plate and spun it on a pencil.
I didn’t think it was working well enough so I experimented with adding black paint to the outside and of trying smaller slits.
Both failed to make it work better.
Overall I think it would have worked better if there was a simpler image inside the zoetrope. Perhaps making it black and white and ramping up the contrast.
Something to try next time.
The work became a kind of peep show and I started looking up artists who might have done similar things.
Interesting artist: Mat Collishaw who made a zoetrop that was like the circles of hell!
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/mat-collishaw-2588/mat-collishaw-studio-visit
Also an interdisciplinary artist.
Also found work by Ray McCarthy Bergeron who made a 3D printed zoetrope.
It made me think about the aesthetic qualities of repeated loops of images. How they seem to soothe as they repeat while still remaining interesting because of how interesting they are to look at…
