Step right up and take a spin of the amazing zoetrope that simulates actual human and animal locomotion. That was a huge deal in 1834 and set pulses racing. Without these novel spinning wheels filled with small sequential images (think galloping horse), our species wouldn’t have invented animation or the movies. Unthinkable. Here we are, nearly two centuries later, back to spinning small images, now endlessly, with talk and text!
What began as a Victorian Era novelty toy once known as a zoetrope, or Wheel of Life, is the subject of a top-tier exhibition of eight international artists who reimagine the nearly forgotten form in delightful new ways. SPIN! The Art of the Modern Zoetrope is the latest and most interactive exhibition yet presented at the well-appointed smART Space gallery overlooking the atrium of Science Museum Oklahoma.
“We recognize the evolving overlap between science and contemporary art, so smART Space is dedicated to exploring those connections in really accessible ways,” commented Alyson Atchison, Museum Director of Galleries and Collections. SMO also brings to the table a robust fabrication team that supports and collaborates with the artists, several of whom are showing in a museum for the first time.
Atchison and Assistant Curator Dustin Hamby had been thinking about zoetropes for years after seeing one daily as part of the Museum’s main science galleries. Hamby explained, “I became fascinated by their history as philosophical toys. If the zoetrope was the precursor of animation and film, we wanted to see how artists were using the zoetrope in the 21st century.”
Even if the technology has changed, the same 19th-century hand-brain-eye science that dazzles us with moving pictures has not.
Hamby’s spent two years curating a global roster of artists engaged with the zoetrope in wildly different iterations. One of the strengths of SPIN! is the quality and diversity of artists who manage to deconstruct the analog technology in fun ways while revealing something new about it with digital tools.
Eric Dyer’s “Girona Octopi” is emblematic of this by inviting the viewer to walk inside a large circular vinyl floor print. At the center, a simple mounted hand crank puts us in the middle of the action. When we turn the crank, the floor spins around us, activating the cutest darting octopi, but the action is only visible in the digital projected image on the wall. The instant wonder is in the interactive play of the crank on the wheel: forward, backward, fast, slow. Woo, we’re the ones making it move! Still a thrill.
Graphic designer Drew Tetz approaches the same idea with a different, slightly younger spinning technology—the phonograph turntable. His meticulous vinyl record designs bring to life figures, flowers or text choreographed at precise record speeds of 33, 45 and 78 revolutions per minute.
With origins in an epic Burning Man installation called “Charon,” we can admire San Francisco artist Hudzo’s working scale miniature of what looks like a Ferris wheel of skeletons piloting a boat. At the correct speed, a strobe light activates the animation of the skeleton ferryman, and our brains want to believe.
Japanese artist Akinoro Goto returns to the philosophical roots of the zoetrope as he considers our human perception of time and movement. “Crossing #02” consists of light-filled figures captured in a profoundly simple rotating ring of 3D printed nylon mesh. Differently wonderful are thoughtful works by Christine Veras and Elliot Schultz that transform the magic of hand-brain-eye science into beautiful sculptural art objects.
The father-daughter team called Ryterski Wonders applies their engineering talents toward their carnivalesque “Magic Canopies.” Using digital 3D character design and printing, their undersea theme was styled after early cartoon characters enhanced by eye-popping colors and clever motion. Knowing their audience, the work contains two speeds; one for eyes and one for phones.
If an untitled work can steal the show, it is Gregory Barsamian’s tour de force. The Brooklyn-based artist’s kinetic sculpture features a series of small three-sided rooms mounted to a large round mechanical armature. As the rooms spin in a hypnotizing strobe light, the artist appears seated at his drawing table in a framed photo hanging on the wall. He looks directly at us and throws a wadded ball of paper out of his two-dimensional plane into the apparently three-dimensional room where it somehow splats against the wall. Mind blown.
While SPIN! stands on its own as a contemporary art exhibition, another strength is the didactic display of brief process-oriented videos giving insight into each work, as well as bilingual English-Spanish labels throughout. The zoetrope still has some life in it. These works simply must be experienced to be believed.
This article appears in Not Quite Bedlam.