‘Good Evening, Major’

Mr Muybridge continues to embed himself deep and wide within today’s popular culture, as evidenced by this new song from acoustic band Accordions.

‘Good Evening, Major‘ – music video Watch it on YouTube.

In April of 2010, the band Accordions wrote a song about Eadweard Muybridge’s murder of his wife’s lover in 1874. Shortly after the song was written, NPR publicized the first ever retrospective of Muybridge’s work in Washington D.C. at the Corcoran. They also announced a contest for videos or photos that bring Muybridge into the twenty-first century. Accordions went into the recording studio and contacted a long-time friend and collaborator Brent Aldrich, who is a video artist and photographer. This music video for the song ‘Good Evening, Major’ is the result.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXnTEVDSxv4
http://www.WeTookToTheSkies.com

Lyrics: And in a dream you were an island waves crashing just out of reach I watched you sleep. And in your sleep I heard you sighing crying a name that did not belong to me. Sparkling dew, flora and fauna– you’re vaster than views of the West. I held you best. And when I came to, thoughts of nirvana, and keeping your form in a frame, I held my breath. Pictures bled with light projecting my love with a scream– I’ll watch him fall. And I won’t feel a thing or speak his name– some major you met in the ranks, I’ll make him see (“Good evening, Major, my name is Muybridge, and here is the answer to the letter you sent to my wife”) Pictures bled with light, projecting my love with a scream– I’ll watch him fall. And I won’t feel a thing or speak his name, some major you met in the ranks– I’ll make him bleed. (“Good evening, Major, my name is Muybridge, and here is the answer to the letter you sent to my wife”) And I won’t feel a thing.

Benjamin Bernthal
Joseph Kilbourn
Ben Leslie
Kipp Normand
Steve Trowbridge
& often
Adam Gross
&
various fellow artists & musicians.

http://www.wetooktotheskies.com/about.html

Posted here by Stephen Herbert

Muybridge in Kingston: new website

Another new website, Muybridge in Kingston, has been launched, to provide information on the exhibitions and events planned in Muybridge’s home town from this summer, and the Kingston Museum Muybridge Collection.

Muybridge in Kingston is an exciting collaborative research and development partnership between Kingston University and the Royal Borough of Kingston that is celebrating and investigating Kingston Museum’s world-class collection. This ongoing partnership aims to broaden access to, and understanding of, the collection through a programme of innovative research projects including special exhibitions, publications, web-resources, conferences, symposia and other public events.

http://www.muybridgeinkingston.com/home.html

Website sections include:

Kingston Museum – Muybridge Revolutions

18 Sept 2010 – 12 Feb 2011

Lantern slide, Kingston Museum

This exhibition focuses on arguably the rarest surviving Muybridge objects within the Kingston Museum collection, the beautiful hand-painted glass zoopraxiscope discs. Numbering nearly 70 discs, these objects comprise an astounding collection of items, which straddle the disciplinary boundaries between photography, art, animation and cinematography.

Informed by true photographic sequences, the discs were designed to confirm the validity of Muybridge’s moving image work, which he sought to achieve through an extensive, world-wide lecture programme. Compared to Muybridge’s photographic work, these are possibly the least well known or understood part of his career. As such, they are sometimes overlooked in terms of their significance. Displayed alongside the discs will be some of the original photographic sequences that informed them, represented as albumen prints, collotype prints and images on glass. The relationship between the original photographic sequences and the discs form an integral part of a new interpretation of his work, the result of new research into the Kingston Muybridge collection.

Stanley Picker Gallery – Contemporary Commissions

Muybridge’s groundbreaking work remains a key inspiration to practitioners across an array of interdisciplinary fields. …. the Stanley Picker Gallery is celebrating his lifetime’s achievements through the eyes of two contemporary artists who have been given privileged access to rare material held at the Kingston Museum archives. These new commissions provide us with twenty-first Century perspectives on a world-class historical collection, and explore new ways to consider the ongoing impact of Muybridge’s influential work.

Trevor Appleson 18 Sept – 13 Nov 2010

….ambitious new moving-image and photographic works inspired by Muybridge’s famous collotype sequences of human figures. As part of a residency at The London Contemporary Dance School, the artist has invited dancers to reinterpret gestures and actions that relate to the various visual narratives that Muybridge himself built into his original motion studies.

Becky Beasley 24 Nov – 5 Feb 2011

Taking inspiration from ambiguities in his life-story… an installation of new works that reflect upon the end of Muybridge’s life after his truly epic experiences in the American West. Beasley has attempted to trace an origin to a myth that, at the time of his death, Muybridge was constructing a scale model of the American Great Lakes in his back garden in Kingston.

(Do take a look at the website to see the accompanying artists’ photographs.)
http://www.muybridgeinkingston.com/gallery.html

Plus: links to the new Defining Modernities web portal, and (forthcoming) information on Events.

Posted here by Stephen Herbert