Photographers, iPhones at the ready! Tate has announced the release of its new app, The Muybridgizer. Created to celebrate the Eadweard Muybridge exhibition at
Tate Britain, which will run until 16th January 2011.
Muybridge was an early pioneer in photography, becoming famous for his work in capturing animal and human subjects in motion. The story goes that in 1872 Leland Stanford, a former Governor of California and race horse owner, hired Muybridge to settle a question about the movement of a horse in gallop. The question was whether all four of a horses hooves are off the ground at the same time during a gallop. The question has been fiercely debated for a great length of time, and it's even clear from old paintings of horses and the like that people just weren't sure.
Muybridge took to photographing Stanfords horse in quick succession while it was moving to reveal that a horse does in fact have all four hooves off the ground at points during a gallop, but not in the same way that painters and illustrators had previously depicted them.
Photographing people and animals in motion became a matter of study for Muybridge, and his work was amongst the first instances of videography.
The Tate now invites you to make your own version of a Muybridge, using the new Muybridgizer app which is available from iTunes, and is free for the duration of the exhibition. Once you have made your Muybridge, you can then upload it to Flickr and perhaps see you image displayed on the dedicated
Tate website.