The Power of Display. Gae Archive
8-Channel Video Installation

Phenakistoscope (im-mortal leap)

A phenakistoscope is a primitive optical instrument, predecessor of the first cinematographic machines. In reality, it is retinal persistence (the persistence of images perceived through our eye) that allows us to think in terms of movement from still images, from superimpositions of frames.

This retinal afterimage is possibly the most important optical phenomenon of the 18th century as a subjective visual phenomenon and I understand the appearance of the spectral as an optical truth. In the 19th century, this phenomenon will be the starting point for developing broader epistemologies **. The empirical truth of the notion of image persistence as an explanation of the illusion of movement together with photography, allowed us to conceive what our cinema is today.

Thus, the phenakistoscope introduces us to the world of complicity and the belief that everything is possible where the inhabitants of the basement corridors have this appearance of truth, despite the fact that we know that they are part of the artifice and the game.

**Crary, Jonathan: Las técnicas del observador. Visión y modernidad en el siglo XIX (Chapter IV). CENDEAC. Múrcia. 2008

Construction and development: Emilio Jofre Domènech
https://emiliojofredomenech.com/