STORY
STORY
The magic of flipbooks is rooted in the 1890s, when photographs were first sequenced to create moving pictures. We draw inspiration from this industrial era in our own flipbook creations.
Our journey into flipbook art began in 2009 during our travels through Europe and the Middle East. We were captivated by the mid-twentieth century mechanized signs, particularly the split-flap (or solari) departure and arrival boards in train stations. The rhythmic “click-clack-click-clack” of these boards left a lasting impression on us.
Back in Los Angeles, our fascination with mechanical devices deepened. We explored old aerospace junkyards, excitedly sifting through obsolete equipment. Wendy was enchanted by the aesthetic of corroded metals, gauges, dials, and buttons from a bygone era, while Mark was drawn to the functional parts and inner workings, feeling nostalgic for the old aerospace equipment he had encountered.
Our newfound passion led us to engage with a local hackerspace, where it became clear that our love for tech and art naturally converged. This intersection of interests propelled us into the world of tech art, laying the foundation for our bespoke flipbook machines.
WISH
WISH
Once we’d solved the issue of developing the technology – our wish was to bring emotional depth to the flipbook medium. How people connected to these magical movie machines became most important; that’s when the craft really began to take a hold of us.
Our goal is to push the boundaries of what’s possible, creating interactive experiences that not only delight but also deeply engage and inspire those who encounter them.
OUR FUTURE
OUR FUTURE
Invent - Imagine - Explore. Community is important to us, and we love collaborating with fellow creatives. To nurture that connection, we created “Fliposcope”, a DIY kit that enables anyone to build and customize their own hand-cranked movie machine. We’ve been moved and amazed to see what other people have made with this artistic technology.
History of the Moving Image
The first flipbook appeared in Birmingham, England in 1868 when the British lithograph printer John Barnes Linnett patented his new invention under the name kineograph, literally “a moving picture”. Although the earlier phenakistoscope was able to produce a circular sequence of images, Linnett’s kineograph was the world’s first type of animation to use a linear sequence of images.
Almost thirty years later, Max Skladanowsky, the early German filmmaker and inventor, also prepared to unveil his own moving photographic images. He and his brother Emil had not yet developed their own film projector, and he exhibited his serial images as a flipbook in 1894. That same year, the American Herman Casler unveiled his new invention, the Mutoscope – a mechanized flipbook that, instead of binding the images as a flipbook, mounted them to a rotating cylinder.
It was Casler’s invention that truly captured the public’s imagination and his variation of the classic flipbook was a popular attraction well into the 20th century, often appearing in amusement parks and arcades. At the turn of the century, Henry William Short introduced the filoscope, a flipbook that included a small metal holder that made it much easier to flip the pages and see the images come to life.