[vimeo http://vimeo.com/22633568]Eric Dyer, associate professor of Visual Arts, has been awarded a 2012 fellowship for creative arts by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Professor Dyer is an artist, filmmaker, experimental animator, and educator whose award-winning films have screened internationally at numerous festivals, including the Chicago International Film Festival, the Ann Arbor Film Festival, South by Southwest, and the Ottawa, Annecy, Melbourne, and London International Animation Festivals. His work has also been exhibited at the Exploratorium, the Hirshhorn, the Smithsonian National Gallery of Art, Ars Electronica, and the Cairo and Venice Biennales.

Much of his recent work focuses on the zoetrope, as shown in the video clip above. Dyer comments, “I have dug up the zoetrope, a pre-cinema optical toy, and am using it to create and explore a visual language of loops and spirals. When spun, the complex circular sculptures, dubbed cinetropes, are a blur to the human eye but come to full animated life when viewed through shutter glasses or the lens of a fast-shutter video camera. This video is a compilation of film clips and behind-the-scenes footage from [my zoetropes] Copenhagen Cycles and The Bellows March.”