Secret Machine is the second of the Secrets Trilogy; a cycle exploring the imperceptible conditions that frame life and is preceded by Secret Life (2008) and followed by Six Easy Pieces (2010)
In Secret Machine a woman is subjected to Muybridge’s motion studies. She is treated in the same fashion as in the original Muybridge photography: with Greek aesthetic in a Cartesian grid. A short time after Mybridge’s studies, Duchamp painted Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (1912) attempting to show time on a flat surface. He is expanding cubism and painting into another dimension: time. Time is about movement and change, like our experience of reality. Without change life does not exist. Photography does not capture this experience. In Secret Machine different filming techniques are compared to the motion of the body. The film camera becomes another measurement tool in a way a video camera cannot. The intention was to make an art piece from the point of view of a machine, specifically a camera.

Reynold Reynolds (b. 1966) lives and works in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he studied under Carl Wieman (Physics Nobel Laureate, 2001). Changing his focus to studio art he remained two more years in Boulder to study under experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage. After moving to New York City Reynolds completed an M.F.A. at the School of Visual Arts. He is a recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. He has been awarded both the Rome Prize (2013) and the Berlin Prize (2004). His work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (New York) and has been shown in numerous biennales including the 4th Berlin Biennale and the 3rd Moscow Biennale.