The forgotten art of the zoetrope | Eric Dyer

213,237 views ・ 2017-11-05

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A long time ago,
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I was a professional animator.
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(Music)
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[Eric Dyer]
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[Animator]
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[Compositor]
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And at night,
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I would make my own experimental films.
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(Music)
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And I was spending a lot of time, way too much time, in front of a screen
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for work that would be presented on a screen,
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and I had this great need to get my hands back on the work again.
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Now, before "The Simpsons,"
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before "Gumby,"
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before "Betty Boop,"
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before there was such a thing as cinema and television,
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animation was hugely popular in this form.
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This is a zoetrope.
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And you spin this drum,
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and you look through the slits into the inside of the drum,
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and you see the animation pop to life.
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This is animation in physical form,
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and it's animation I could get my hands on again.
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I took these ideas to Denmark.
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I went there with my family on a Fulbright Fellowship.
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That's my daughter, Mia.
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I rode around the city on my bicycle
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and shot all the interesting moving elements of Copenhagen:
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the boaters in the canals,
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the colors that explode in spring,
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the free-use city bikes,
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love,
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textures,
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the healthy cuisine --
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(Laughter)
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And I brought all that video back into the physical world
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by printing it out on these long strips of ink-jet paper
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and cutting out the forms.
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Now, I invented my own form of the zoetrope,
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which removes the drum
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and replaces the slits with a video camera.
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And this was very exciting for me,
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because it meant that I could make these physical objects,
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and I could make films from those objects.
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That's me riding on my bicycle.
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(Laughter)
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I made about 25 paper sculptures,
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each the size of a bicycle wheel.
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I brought them into the studio,
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spun them
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and shot them to make the film "Copenhagen Cycles."
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(Music)
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This project not only allowed me to get my hands back on the work again
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but it helped me get my life back.
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Instead of spending 12, 15 hours a day with my face plastered to a screen,
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I was having these little adventures with our new family
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and shooting video along the way,
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and it was kind of a symbiosis of art and life.
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And I think that it's no mistake
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that zoetrope translates into "wheel of life."
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(Music)
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But film and video does flatten sculpture,
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so I tried to imagine
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a way that animated sculpture could be experienced as such,
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and also a completely immersive kind of animated sculpture.
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And that's where I came up with the idea for the zoetrope tunnel.
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You walk through with a handheld strobe,
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and wherever you point the flashlight,
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the animation pops to life.
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I plan to finish this project in the next 30 to 40 years.
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(Laughter)
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But I did build a half-scale prototype.
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It's covered in Velcro,
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and I could lay inside on this bridge
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and stick animated sequences to the walls
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and test stuff out.
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People would comment that it reminded them of an MRI.
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And that medical connection spoke to me,
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because at the age of 14,
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I was diagnosed with a degenerative retinal condition
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that's slowly taking my vision away,
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and I'd never responded to that in my work.
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So I responded to it in this piece called, "Implant."
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It is an imaginary, super-magnified medical device
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that fits around the optic nerve.
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And the public is, in a sense, miniaturized to experience it.
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With a handheld strobe,
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they can explore the sculpture,
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and discover thousands of cell-sized robots
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hard at work, leaping in and out of the optic nerve,
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being deployed to the retina
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to repair it.
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It's my science fiction fantasy cure of my own incurable disorder.
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(Machine buzzes)
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Now, in the real-world gene therapy and gene therapy research,
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healthy genes are being administered to unhealthy cells using viruses.
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There's a lot of colorful, fluffy hope in this,
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and there's also some creepy, threatening idea
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of viruses maybe becoming an invasive species in your body.
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Vision loss has helped to take me away from the things
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that disconnect me from the world.
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Instead of being sealed off in an automobile,
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I ride my bike,
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take buses and trains
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and walk a lot.
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And instead of a visually intensive process in the studio, primarily,
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I'm also getting outdoors a lot more
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and using more of my senses.
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This landscape is a couple hours east of San Diego, California.
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My brother lives out that way.
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He and I went camping there for four days.
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And I grabbed my camera,
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and I walked through the canyons.
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And I tried to imagine and figure out
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what kind of motion would be present
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in this place that was so still and so devoid of motion.
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I think it's the stillest place I've ever been.
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And I realized that it was the movement of my own body through the landscape
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that was creating the animation.
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It was the motion of changing perspective.
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So I created this piece called "Mud Caves" from those photographs.
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It's a multilayered print piece,
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and you can think of it as a zoetrope laid flat.
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It's kind of my western landscape panorama.
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And next to the print piece there's a video monitor
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that shows the animation hidden within the artwork.
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I think one of the best parts about this project for me
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was that I got to hang out with my brother a lot,
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who lives 2,500 miles away from me.
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And we would just sit in this seemingly eternal landscape
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sculpted by water over millions of years
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and talk.
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We'd talk about our kids growing up
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and the slowing pace of our parents,
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and our dad who's suffering from leukemia, memory loss and infection.
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And it struck me that, as individuals,
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we're finite,
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but as a family,
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we are an ongoing cycle --
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a kind of wheel of life.
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Now, I want to leave you with a tribute to one of my mentors.
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She reminds me that physical presence is important
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and that play is not a luxury,
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but a necessity.
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She's Pixie,
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and she's our family dog.
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And she loves to jump.
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(Dog barking)
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(Dog barking and spring boinging)
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And this is a new kind of zoetrope
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that I developed at the Imaging Research Center
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at UMBC in Baltimore.
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And I call it a "real-time zoetrope."
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(Dog barking)
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(Dog barking and spring boinging)
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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