Introducing Phantasistoscope: Our New Sister Site Devoted to Filmic Collage

By: Eric Edelman June 21, 2011 – Posted in: Aesthetics Collage & Montage Creativity Dadaism Digital Art Digital Collage Inspiration Surrealism

Art of RetroCollage takes great pleasure in announcing the opening of our sister website, Phantasistoscope.

Phantasistoscope is a website devoted to the beauty of the moving image, that rapidly unrolling collage of kinetic visual impressions. Phantasistoscope takes its inspiration from optical illusions, early explorations of moving images, and the optical inventions that arose from them: the phenakistoscope, zoetrope, praxinoscope, phantasmagoria, thaumatrope, mutoscope, flip book, kinetoscope, and cinematograph. Phantasistoscope aims to recapture that time of magic movement and bring it forward to the present day, by presenting some of the best animated and other short films of the early period, and serving as a showcase for new creative animation and shorts.

Currently, Phantasistoscope features the following short films:

Heavenly Bodies (1920): An imaginative and unintentionally surrealist presentation of astrophysics, with many novel stop-motion and live-action sequences
Gumbasia (1955): An abstract extravaganza of color, form, and movement; the debut film of Art Clokey, the famous master claymation animator & creator of Gumby
Gertie the Dinosaur (1914): A dinosaur comes to life in over 10,000 drawings made on a bet
Kinograms Newsreel (1924): Back-to-back silent newsreel sequences about the newly-inaugurated President Calvin Coolidge and volunteer park-building in California

20 Comments… add one

A Fathers’ Day Gift to You from RetroCollage

Mosaic of RetroCollage I

The Underwater Typewriter: Collage and Marc Zegans’s Tangible Poetry

Collage’s Dappled Glory

House of Collage Dreams

Collage’s Little Saboteur

20 comments… add one

Sukhmandir Kaur

June 21, 2011, 8:57 pm

Imagine the magic of the first moving pictures. We have certainly come a long way!

Eric Edelman

June 22, 2011, 1:06 am

Yes … They were sometimes so magical that, at the very beginning, they occasionally created public alarm: For example, in Paris, the early movie by the Brothers Lumière of the locomotive arriving at a station seemed so realistic that it panicked its audience, who stampeded out of the theater to avoid being crushed by the oncoming train!

And though we’ve come a long way since then, sometimes the same very simple things about motion pictures affect us the most: the things that add to their realism or their fantasy. Thanks for visiting us and for your comment.

Catch My Words

June 21, 2011, 9:11 pm

Interesting drawing. I’m looking forward to another Wordless Wednesday tomorrow. Thanks for the linky.

Joyce
http://joycelansky.blogspot.com

Eric Edelman

June 22, 2011, 12:56 am

Thanks very much for your visit and comment, Joyce. The drawing is actually a digital collage, a “Retro-Collage” made of scans from old engraved illustrations combined and colorized in Photoshop. Have a great WW!

Tarasview LINKY

June 21, 2011, 9:40 pm

sounds very interesting!

Eric Edelman

June 22, 2011, 12:53 am

Thanks, I hope you enjoy the site.

Meryl

June 21, 2011, 10:21 pm

This looks really awesome! I just blogged (last week) about the growing importance of visual literacy, and this looks like its right up that alley. I will check it all out once I post this. I also hope you come to my blog. Go to the post on visual literacy and leave a link as I think my followers would love to see it!

Thanks,
Meryl

Eric Edelman

June 22, 2011, 12:52 am

Thanks, Meryl, I’m looking forward to visiting your blog. Visual literacy has been a longtime favorite subject of mine. And thanks very much for visiting us!

Lisa @ My Thoughts w/Linky