Tate today announced the launch of its The Muybridgizer App on the App Store. The app allows iPhone photographers to take pictures inspired by the iconic works of early photographer Eadweard Muybridge. The release of the app celebrates the major retrospective of Muybridge’s work at Tate Britain running until 16 January 2011. The app is available for free for the duration of the exhibition.
The Muybridgizer App allows iPhone users to freeze-frame the moving world around them just as Muybridge did with subjects ranging from running horses to leapfrogging boys. In homage to the analogue Victorian beauty of the originals, users can Muybridge-ize their frames with grids and sepia tones, transforming their moving images into striking vintage-style pictures.
Tate will be inviting people to share their 21st century Muybridge-ized snaps through social photo sharing website Flickr. Any images uploaded to Flickr from the Muybridgizer app can be found by searching for Muybridgizer, while images added to the Muybridgizer Flickr Group will be also displayed on Tate Online: http://muybridgizer.tate.org.uk/.
To make the app, Tate commissioned Nexus Interactive Arts directors Theo Watson & Emily Gobeille. In addition to the app Theo & Emily, along with the Nexus studio, designed the microsite and have used their own modern day technologies to create authentic re-animations of Muybridge’s works which will be projected in short films within the exhibition.
Born in Kingston upon Thames in April 1830, Muybridge studied photography before building his career in America. Perhaps best known for his extensive photographic portrayal of animal and human subjects in motion, he was also a highly successful landscape and survey photographer, documentary artist, war correspondent and inventor. Muybridge’s revolutionary techniques produced timeless images that have profoundly influenced generations of photographers, filmmakers and artists, including Francis Bacon, Marcel Duchamp, Jasper Johns, Cy Twombly, and Douglas Gordon.