The Art of Innovation

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The Art of Innovation: Capturing Time

Capturing Time

BBC Radio 4 - The Art of Innovation, Capturing Time

Ian Blatchford and Tilly Blyth on freezing time in a speeding up world.

Sir Ian Blatchford and Dr Tilly Blyth on instantaneous images of photographer Eadweard Muybridge and physiologist Etienne Jules Marey. What kind of truths were being caught?

Sir Ian Blatchford and Dr Tilly Blyth continue their series exploring how art and science have inspired each other. They focus on photographic innovators of the late 1800s who used new advances in camera techniques to freeze time in the name of science, reanimate in the name of entertainment and seek new truths to human and animal motion.

At the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford, Tilly examines part of the Science Museum Group’s extensive collection of photographs by photojournalist and arch showman Eadweard Muybridge. His ingenious photo sequences of stills of a horse in motion helped settle a bet over whether the animal’s hooves leave the ground at speed. He would go on to devise magic lanterns with counter rotating discs of his artistically modified picture sequences to recreate the effect of movement, to the awe and excitement of viewers across America and Europe.
 
Muybridge had little regard for scientific rigour but whilst on tour in Paris his methods were enough to intrigue scientists such as physiologist Etienne Jules Marey who, as Ian illustrates, devised a chronophotographic camera to achieve multiple exposures of athletes in one single plate.

Instantaneous movement had been finally captured for accurate scientific analysis and for art and entertainment.


Producer  Adrian Washbourne

Produced in partnership with The Science Museum Group

Photograph by SSPL/Getty Images

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Factual: Science & Nature: Science & Technology

How art and science have inspired each other.

Sir Ian Blatchford and Dr Tilly Blyth explore how art and science have inspired each other.

In this landmark series, art historian and Director of the Science Museum Ian Blatchford and technology historian and Head of Collections of the Science Museum Tilly Blyth explore the art of invention and the invention of art and reveal the symbiotic relationship between the two. Many feel science takes the magic out of creativity. These programmes show how scientific advance facilitates creativity. And further, how artistic and scientific endeavour are inspired by the same desires and, often, are the result of intimate conversations between good friends. Galileo's painter friend Ludovicio Cigoli paints a maculate moon on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel and what does Galileo see when he looks through his telescope? A maculate moon. The poet Samuel Coleridge and the chemist Humphrey Davy were very close friends. Scientific innovators are creative thinkers. And the creation of art is dependent on technological development, as well as an aesthetic sense. Throughout history, artists and scientists have both desired to make sense of the world around them and change it, 

Produced in partnership with The Science Museum Group. 

Image credit: Science Museum Group Collection © The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum.

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