Gregory
Barsamian, an artist from Brooklyn, New York, created the
animated light sculpture in the tower’s base. Barsamian’s
work has been shown in children’s museums, but Creative
Discovery Museum is the first to have a Barsamian sculpture
on permanent display.
This
sculpture, “Lesson in the Park,” which revolves
at a speed of 30 mph, uses animation to bring fabricated images
to life. Visitors see what seems to be a three-dimensional
bird coming out of a two-dimensional photograph. The bird
then turns into a pair of hands, which release light bulbs
that float into oblivion. Click
here for more information on Barsamian’s
work.
In
a darkened room the artist presents sequentially formed sculptures
on a rapidly spinning armature. A synchronized strobe light
supplies the illumination. The images exist in real time and
guests are able to share the same space with them. The conflict
this sculpture creates between sensory information and logic
recreates the state of dream reality. The scientific basis
for the visual illusion is called the persistence
of vision. Barsamian made sequentially formed sculptures
in plaster, cast them in urethane foam rubber, and attached
them to a motorized armature. To this, he added the synchronized
flash of a strobe light, whose flickering illumination completed
the illusion of animation.
Around
1989, Barsamian stumbled onto the form of the zoetrope, or
wheel of life. Although regarded as a 19th-century parlor
toy, the zoetrope was also a significant optical device that
illustrated the scientific principle of "the persistence
of vision." Introduced by Peter Roget (of Thesaurus fame)
in 1824, this principle explained the phenomenon that we experience,
for instance, in motion pictures: that the human brain "fills
in the blanks" between sequential images seen in a rapid
succession, creating an illusion of continuous action. Decidedly
low-tech by today's standards, the zoetrope was progressive
in its time. Images, at first hand drawn and eventually replaced
by photographs, were mounted on the inside of a rotating drum.
Viewers looking through slits in the drum witnessed this illusion
of unbroken movement or animation.
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