Taggart Shoots:

Many months ago, I planned a workshop at Taggart Elementary School. The original plan had been to do a vintage-type shoot or use a pinhole camera. After the preliminary orientation with the fourth graders, it became clear this was not going to work; there were too many kids and they were too boisterous to do something as slow and concentration-demanding as that. Bi Jean Ngo, a local actress and educator who worked with me on this, suggested bringing in props but having the students photograph each other with disposable cameras. Sarah Gladwin Camp, an educator working in the field of dance also assisted, guiding the students through some excellent warm-up exercises.

Bi's idea worked great! I got a whole bunch of Fuji "Quicksnap" cameras online for a very low price and CBOP/Cardinal also gave me a discount on the processing. We split the class in half and worked with about twenty students in two sessions a week apart. There was a distinct difference in the energies of the two groups. The first was more "wild" but more into the whole photographic process. The second was more well-behaved, but less spontaneous with inventing tableaux for the camera's eye.

I just got back the photographs, digitized on disc. The ratio of usable images is not huge, but there are some good ones. The real issue now is getting permissions for all of them. The kids were told to be sure to get their parents to sign, but I got back less than ten out of forty. So, I can't post the photos yet.

All in all, this was quite a learning experience. As is evidenced by other images I've seen of children, there is something very poignant when children take on the trappings of adult roles. I would do this again, but it really needs to be a process that is worked up to much more slowly--we threw a lot at the kids all at once, but everything considered, it still flew.

05 02 10: Experiemental Prototype

The next logical step seemed to be to build a small zoetrope. I wanted to get my "hands dirty" and see what the issues and pitfalls might be. I knew from looking online that the slits needed to be 1/8" to 1/4", and that a traditional zoetrope apparently has thirteen images. Perhaps this is why, zoetropes were sometimes called "Wheels-of-the-Devil." I made mine with sixteen images since if you bisect a circle and keep on bisecting the parts, this works out easily. I dragged out my old drafting tools I hadn't used since the early 1980's when I was an undergraduate. I made the unit from one solid piece of poster board. I had not intended such an elegant solution, (this unit folds flat for easy transport) but it just worked out that way, developing in two dimensions what would fold and link together into three.

The public kiosk is going to to be most likely run on a 20" diameter drum. This one is exactly 1/2 scale at 10", which is perfect for running on a small phonograph turntable. A musty hand-cranked portable is optional, but at about 40 rpm, the spring motor runs an very long time.

Does it work? Yes! My animation skills are not that wonderful, but it will be more than fine for demonstrations purposes tomorrow at Taggart. Way better than just showing a video grabbed off of Youtube.