A Ridiculous Film-related Pondering
Today I had another slam-on-the-brakes history realization moment. I learned a fact while researching information on how the brain’s intricacies play into our perception of motion pictures — a film, flick, movie, talkie, or any of these affectionate terms we use to describe out Netflix addictions. That fact that I learned was this:
In 1825, John Ayrton Paris invented an interesting toy that demonstrated a fluke of human visual perception¹. This toy was called the thaumatrope and the fluke was the doorway to motion picture films as we know them today.
The thaumatrope was a simple illusion that consisted of a picture of something on one side of a disk (say, a birdcage), and another picture of something different on the other side (maybe something like, I don’t know, a bird). Just like a coin. When spun around, the two images began to seem superimposed. And if spun fast enough, there was no perceivable pause between seeing one image and another, and they were stitched together! Paris published this fun little illusion in a fun little book called Philosophy in Sport Made Science in Earnest. Which I happen to think is a fantastic name for a book written to introduce kids to science “by the aid of games and sports”² . What a fun guy.
Today I am studying modern filmmaking and was dumbstruck to learn that just 200 years ago there were men in suits spinning around disks and making children laugh by conjuring a bird to appear into a cage. 200 years! There is an animal on this planet that can live to be 200 years old, the bowhead whale³. There was an infant bowhead flopping around while 1800’s kids were mesmerized by a one dimensional optical trick, and that same marine mammal is blowing its blowhole still while modern kids drool while watching Pixar’s latest feature.
We have made a lot of ground in a short bowhead-whale lifetime of 200 years. Video is shot using incredible digital replacements of what was once an analog phenomenon. We have created entire art forms filled with nuance as a result of a fluke in our visual system - that we just can keep up with images changing at a certain speed. Out brain smooths them out. The word thaumatrope in Greek literally means “wonder turn.” I have a hunch any child seeing that trick for the first time would experience the same wonder, despite having already seen the more advanced versions of that concept than they will even comprehend. Our eyes are a gift. Our technology is our gift to ourselves to use what we were endowed with. It has only been 200 years, let us keep using our gifts wisely.
1- http://www.stephenherbert.co.uk/thaumatropeTEXT1.htm
2- https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=Vu44AAAAMAAJ&hl=en&pg=GBS.PP7