We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

Paul Collins - The Marey Reel

from Smithsonian Treasures by Cities and Memory

/

about

Piece based on Marey Wheel Photographs of Unidentified Model from the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Collection (1884).

"I was initially made aware of chronophotography while at studying art school: Marcel Duchamp used Marey’s and Muybridges’ work as a direct reference for his painting, “Nu descendant l’escalier, N°2.” The chronophotograph from the Smithsonian Collection is by Thomas Eakins, who is generally recognized as having introduced photography as a tool for art students and painters in America. He used Etienne-Jules Marey’s system of a rotating cylinder mounted on a rifle-like apparatus. This “Marey Wheel” consisted of 25 views. 25 then, is the number of steps that I used to compose the sequence that structures my piece. We hear the steps of the model running, leaping through the air, landing with a thud. This is translated as a motif, or ostinato, that repeats itself, over and over, like multiple prints reproduced from the same negative.

Besides the filmic connotation of a reel, I am referencing here the folk dance.

All sounds in “The Marey Reel” were made using a Moog synthesizer."

credits

from Smithsonian Treasures, released June 1, 2020

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

Cities and Memory Oxford, UK

Cities and Memory is one of the world’s biggest sound projects, a global, collaborative sound art and field recording programme with the aim of remixing the world, one sound at a time. It covers more than 100 countries and territories with 5,000+ sounds and more than 1,000 contributing artists.
Thousands of field recordings, recomposed and reimagined by artists around the world.
... more

contact / help

Contact Cities and Memory

Streaming and
Download help

Report this track or account

If you like The Marey Reel, you may also like: