Making of The Digital Zoetrope

The building of the Digital Zoetrope at Troika´studios. The Digital Zoetrope is a digital installation commisioned by onedotzero Motion Arts Festival.

The zoetrope itself is an updated model of the original zoetrope designed by William Horner in 1834. The original zoetrope uses light and motion to animate individual images or frames, much like traditional film that creates a similar effect by showing a rapid succession of frames causing the illusion of motion. Whilst traditional zoetropes commonly display small loops of figurative animations, Troikas zoetrope works from an abstract pattern that magically starts to form words when it is lit with the right frequency. Building on this concept, Troika created a state of the art and unique prototype, designing and programming all components from scratch. By controlling the frequencies of rapidly blinking LED lights at the center of the zoetrope, it is possible to display different words or alternating patterns depending on the speed of the flashing lights. The viewer cannot see the flickering of the lights due to an effect known as persistence of vision whereby the eye retains a visual image for a fraction of a second after the source has been removed.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Digital
• Zoetrope
• Troika
• Making
• of
• LED
• art
• design
• motion
• graphics