Time Machine Zoetrope - Rob Niosi
The Zoetrope, one of the earliest motion picture machines, serves as the inspiration for this recent work by animator and artist, Rob Niosi. In a Zoetrope, a series of incremental images are arranged on the interior wall of a rotating cylinder. If you look down into cylinder as it spins, the images appear blurred and indistinguishable. The trick is to look through the slits in the wall of the cylinder and see the images spring to life. This optical illusion is due to a phenomenon know as "persistence of vision". When your eye sees a series of distinct images at a certain speed, your brain connects those images and this produces the illusion of motion. In this case, the brain perceives the spinning hands of a gold pocket watch. This one-of-a-kind handcrafted piece was constructed using mahogany, brass and mohair velvet (the same velvet used in Niosi's full-scale Time Machine). Antique lamp parts and gears from a vintage hand drill add a true element of times past. The images of the watch are 3 dimensional castings of an antique timepiece.