Our old mix-tapes had sides A and B. It is only reasonable that their replacements should be CDs.
I used last year’s A To Z – Y post to babble about watching old black and white films on YouTube, an old and already, almost obsolete platform. I thought I might close this year out by writing about an older system of watching even older moving pictures. Ladies and gentlemen, Thomas Alva Edison Presents his fabulous
ZOETROPE
[ zoh-ee-trohp ]
a device for giving an illusion of motion, consisting of a slitted drum that, when whirled, shows a succession of images placed opposite the slits within the drum as one moving image.
ORIGIN OF ZOETROPE
1865–70; irregular <Greek zōḗ life + tropḗ turn
Western society has come so far, so fast, perhaps nowhere quite much as in Entertainment. For centuries – millennia – a flickering candle was the zenith of amusement and attention-holding. Technology has changed entertainment, particularly the visual arts – films, television, and videos.
A century ago, Lon Chaney – Senior – the great makeup genius and actor, played a Jekyll and Hyde type role in a film. He walked around a ‘tree’ as Jekyll, altered nothing but the way he held his body and face, and came around the other side as the evil Hyde character. Some women watching the movie actually fainted. Play today’s Alien, or Predator, or even The Matrix, and we’d have the entire audience aswoon.
My attempts at entertainment are definitely spinning, and often best viewed through a narrow slit. I’ve got to get out of this heavy white jacket. I’ve got the month of April to put into motion. 😉
Archon's Den 