Impressions of Motion

Impression (noun) /ɪmˈpreʃ.ən/

I. Vague Belief: A notion or memory that is not very clear or distinct. (Merriam-Webster)
II. Physical Mark: A mark made on the surface of something by pressing onto it. (Cambridge Dictionary)
III. Imitation: An amusing or clever copy of the way a person acts or speaks. (Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries)

2025

Impressions of Motion is a virtual sculpture, created by a custom process of subverting 3D Gaussian Splatting.

using Eadweard Muybridge‘s photographs from his studies of motion, and synthetic training data, it is built just like a Gaussian Splat reconstruction from the real world, except unlike a regular Structure from Motion (SfM) process, I have designated camera positions and images intentionally.

this project brings an early form of photography into the world of machine learning and modern computer graphics with a media archeology philosophy.

my intention was to capture motion inside a single static Gaussian Splat scene, hence the idea of a cylindrical format (for a repeating loop).

the result is reminiscent of the concept of a zoetrope, and is essentially an (almost impossible to physically build) anamorphic sculpture.

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