The Artist:

In 1878, Leland Stanford commissioned Eadward Muybridge to prove that at one moment of time, as a horse gallops, it becomes fully airborne. After several breakthroughs in photochemistry, throughout 1872 to 1877, and developing electrical shutters with exposures lasting a fraction of a second – the fastest at that time, Muybridge successfully proved Leland’s claim. To complete his task, Muybridge also had twelve cameras along the track of Palo Alto on Standford’s estate.

As the horse galloped by, it tripped wires connected to the electrical shutters, which then took twelve photos in rapid succession. The images, developed on site, revealed the proof that all four legs were tucked underneath it for a brief moment. Although this was not seen using the naked eye, technology revealed the truth and many people realised the full potential of the medium.

How he inspired my recreation:

Eadward muybridge also did many other locomotions of other animals and human movement. However, the realisation of using all twelve cameras rigged up to trip wires and electrical shutters never seemed significant to me, until I started to think of how I would recreate the works of Muybridge today, in this time and age. It is extremely amazing how technical Muybridge thinking and skills had to be to achieve his locomotions.

For example, in some of his locomotions, he had a view of the animal or human move from the front. It was easy to figure out the process he took to capture movement from the side. However, it was more complicated from the front.

By observing the pictures he took from the front, some of the pictures from the front were blurry. This could mean that he had cameras that moved further back from the subject, capturing the continuous movement. He would then tightly crop the pictures when developing them causing them to be blurry as quality wasn’t as good.

In today’s day and age, we are very lucky as this process would be as simple as adjusting a few settings on the camera and having a good tripod. This inspired me to make my own locomotions and to push my creativity and the potential of the camera and lighting, by using technology we have today.

My Recreation of Eadward Muybridge’s Work

Chocolate on Grapes

Soya on Oranges

Honey on Bell Pepper

Inspired by Muybridge’s work, where he photographed water poured over nude women, I wanted to mimic the act of pouring a liquid. It fascinated me how u could see every water droplet in the pictures, and how a liquid takes on a sculptural form as it flows its way around and into the crevices of the subjects.

I started to wonder what would happen if the liquid poured was of different viscosities. What different results could I have achieved in terms of its sculptural forms?

In recreating Muybridge’s work, I decided to pour different liquids onto objects. These liquids would have different viscosity – milk, melted chocolate, and honey. To make it more interesting I decided that the objects would be foods with different unique shapes – oranges, grapes and a capsicum.

In terms of lighting, I pushed myself to use studio lighting in school, and with the help of my seniors, I managed to achieve a bright light high key setting. I used a single light source, propped high up to avoid shadows, and a tripod for stability. This required a few attempts of pouring the liquid. Here, is a photo of what was going on behind the scene. This is my friend Shiau Yu helping me pour the different liquids as I press the shutter. As for taking the pictures, I set to multiple shutter to allow me to take consecutive shots of the motion.

However, my camera is quite slow in loading the pictures and stopped after the 8-9 shots. I then edit and put the gif together in photoshop. I also found out that the grapes was best in terms of creating lots of dynamic shapes to the sculpture.

As a whole, I really enjoyed this process as I got into the mind of Eadward Muybridge and even got a chance to push my creativity and skills like indoor lighting, food styling and creating gifs. If I did this project again, I would definitely choose a food with dynamic shapes and have different coloured backgrounds to contrast with the subject. 

Here are the some individual shots that I found interesting in terms of sculptural forms.