Spotlight on Raphael Perret

Raphael Perret is an artist from Switzerland who came to speak at OSU Mansfield on Thursday. During the lecture, Perret talked to us about some of his projects that he has spent a lot of time working on. I loved the fact that his works were made from the movement of people, but what really made me appreciate his work was the fact that he chose to sculpt the movements of someone who was doing a Brazilian form of martial arts. This meant that the images of movement that he captured were not only arm and leg actions, but also the movement of the martial artist spinning upside down in the air and doing flips and such. The swift motions of the martial artist made for an image that looked seriously awesome as a sculpture. 

Someone during the lecture asked Perret if he had ever done similar art but with pedestrians rather than martial artists. At first, I thought that a sculpture done of the motions of a pedestrian would just be a straight line that was in the shape of a person and that it wouldn't look like anything but a human. But as I thought more about it, I realized that along with the arm movements of the pedestrian and the alternating steps of the legs, it would be an interesting piece that I would be interested in seeing one day. The Perret lecture put into perspective different ways that I can look at motion and like Perret, notice that even though a motion is done and you will never see it again, there is a way that the entire motion can be captured forever in an intriguing sculpture piece.