Do you know what a praxinoscope is? Have you ever heard of a zoetrope? It’s similar in structure, but better in output:
The praxinoscope was an animation device, the successor to the zoetrope. It was invented in France in 1877 by Charles-Émile Reynaud. Like the zoetrope, it used a strip of pictures placed around the inner surface of a spinning cylinder. The praxinoscope improved on the zoetrope by replacing its narrow viewing slits with an inner circle of mirrors, placed so that the reflections of the pictures appeared more or less stationary in position as the wheel turned. Someone looking in the mirrors would therefore see a rapid succession of images producing the illusion of motion, with a brighter and less distorted picture than the zoetrope offered.
The director of Moray McLaren’s recent music video made a bunch of praxinoscope plates (drew and colored them) and set up a series of the device for the video. I have to say that it is one cool example of the Law of Reflection!
Check out the video:
