The birth of motion capture
Transcribing the phenomena of bodily movement through the “graphic method”
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 22223164 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Mark Paterson (0000-0003-2701-4827, University of Pittsburgh, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 1 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 195-215 |
| Publication date | 2021-06-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Multimodality & Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2634-9795 • E-ISSN: 2634-9809 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/26349795211040323 |
| OpenAlex | W3195453765 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 20 |
How is the movement of bodies recorded, traced, captured? How is the perception of movement decomposed, analyzed, and then reconstructed through signs, lines, and diagrams? This article traces how, with the help of engineers and collaborators, Etienne-Jules Marey’s self-styled “graphic method” innovated upon existing instruments and photographic apparatuses in order to capture not just the movement of horses’ legs but something of the biomechanical essence of animal movement through the technique of “chronophotographie.” Although inspired by Edward Muybridge’s photographs of horses in motion, for Marey the photographs were not the end result. What he achieved were new ways of transcribing the phenomena of bodily motion. Unlike previous physiologists who thrived on vivisection in the laboratory, Marey took ever greater pains to examine the principles of animal movement in the wild, and built an open-air “station physiologique” in a Parisian park for this purpose. One legacy of Marey’s chronophotographic technique was in the documentation and dissection of human movement, and became acknowledged precursors of the wave of Taylorism which would sweep industrial research in the early 20th century. But another legacy is the capacity to transcribe the phenomena of movement into other forms, externalizing perception across other media
Aesthetics · Art · Cognitive science · Documentation · Perception · Visual arts · Communication · Computer Science · Historical and Scientific Studies · History · Neurology and Historical Studies · Neuroscience · Philosophical and Theoretical Analysis · Psychology · Artificial Intelligence
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Marey, Muybridge, and Londe
Uses of video in social research
Multimodal transcription as academic practice
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The pulse of modernism
Archaeologies of Touch
Seeing, feeling, and showing 'bodies-in-place
The Image of Objectivity
The Physiological Circus
Engines for Experiment
Hearing Gloves and Seeing Tongues? Disability, Sensory Substitution and the Origins of the Neuroplastic Subject
A Simplest Systematics for the Organization of Turn-Taking for Conversation
| Citations per year | 0.75 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2022 - 2026 (5) |
| Highly cited | No |