Experimental Animation Notes from Understanding Animation

Abstraction (aesthetic)
- 'abstract films are more concerned with rhythm and movement in their own right as opposed to the rhythm and movement of a particular character.'
-'shape or forms rather than figures'
-'highest mental and spiritual faculties'

Specific non-continuity (distinctive language | non-narrative)
-'signals the rejection of logical and linear continuity and the prioritisation of the logical and linear continuity and the prioritisation of illogical, irrational and sometimes multiples continuity.'
-'continuities are specific in a sense that they are the vocabulary unique to the particular animation in question'

Interpretive form
- Self-expression: 'vocabulary used by painters and sculptors'
- Subjective: 'the audience are required to interpret the work on their own terms, or terms predetermined by the artist.'
- (William Moritz) 'using animation in a directly metaphoric - "spirit and integrity of its own"- way and not working in the realms of the purely abstract.'

Evolution of materiality
- recognises the physical nature of the medium of choice

Multiple styles
Orthodox Animation: unity of style
Experimental: mixing 'to facilitate the multiplicity of personal visions an artist may wish to incorporate in a film, ... to challenge and re-work the orthodox codes and conventions and create new effects.'

Presence of the artist
-personal, subjective, original responses
-'relations between the artist and the work, and the relationship of the audience to the artist as it is being mediated through the work.'
-'closely related to philosophic and spiritual concerns and seeks to represent inarticulable personal feelings beyond the orthodoxies of language.'

Dynamics of Musicality
-'if music could be visualised it would look like colours and shapes moving through time with differing rhythms, movements and speeds.'
-'psychological and emotional relationship with sound and colour which may be expressed through free form which characterises animation.'
-'often resisting dialogue, the cliched sound effects of the cartoon, or the easy emotiveness of certain kinds of music.'
-'Silence, and avant-garde score, unusual sounds and redefined notions of 'language' are used to create different kinds of statement.'
-'if orthodox animation is about 'prose' then experimental animation is more 'poetic' and suggestive in its intention'

Case studies: non-objective and non-linear animation
(A Colour Box, 1935. Dir. Len Lye)

"A Colour Box" (1932) from Bob Sitton on Vimeo.

'Composing motion' as it reveals the 'Body Energy' which connects the music and images
-the lines, shapes and colours that move in relation to the music represent the spontaneous physical response of the artist during the moment of expression.
-'narrative' is entirely bound up with the psychological and emotional state of the artist in relation to social and environmental stimulus, the background and experience of the artist, and the artist's knowledge and use of the medium.'
-'action that takes place between the frames; subject to intense variation given the conditions he imposes upon himself in making the film.'
-'viewers must find their own relationship with imagery and its determinate meanings on their own terms.'


(The Nose, 1963. Dir. Alexander Alexeiff)

-pinscreen technique: prioritised the ways in which light redefined solid materials rather than animation concerned with line-forms or surfaces.
-'create narrative ambiguities and destabilised environments.'
-'His films seem dream-like and render the viewer uncertain and vulnerable, yet encouraged to participate in dream logic which seems to define parallel worlds.'
- (in other words) create 'the unnatural' and address 'the uncanny'
-'resisting an obvious 'story' in order to create mood and atmosphere'
-'music was later added to punctuate aspects of it rather than to create a specified emotional response.'
-Strong Surrealist tendency: rejection of rationalism -> Freudian theory
(Andre Breton Surrealist Manifesto) 'art should emerge uninhibited from the unconscious mind, recovering the imagination to engage with notions of supernatural  and the re-creation of myths.'
-'Characters' slip in and out of a fluid physical environment and have a temporary narrative status, seemingly operating as figments of the imagination.
- the 'uncanny' can materialise through the acknowledgement and acceptance of the power and effect of any animated image.

(Deadsy, 1990. Dir. David Anderson)

Deadsy (Excerpt) - David Anderson from Film Club Productions on Vimeo.

-Xerography and puppet animation
-Xeroxed (photocopied) and enlarged, and then rendered and drawn on before being re-filmed on a rostrum.
-'The effect to distort and degrade image to create a haunting and hallucinatory quality to 'the character'
'The film continually blurs lines in regard to its representation of 'life' and 'death', masculinity and femininity, and the physicality of sex and violence.'
-'Animation also reduces the status of 'the body' and, in doing so, extends its vocabulary of representation, thus using it as an infinitely malleable property less fixed by biological or social constraints. The body here is uncertain but obviously politicised.'
-'Anderson is attempting to re-engage an audience with its deepest fears, using an abstraction of visual and verbal languages, which resist rationalist interpretation and evoke primal 'babble' of the unconscious mind directly expressing the taboo and the repressed aspects of the human condition.'
-'deliberately resisting interpretations', 'disorientate and provoke the viewer'
-'refutes and invalidates it (sense of 'the real'), insisting upon the medium's capacity to create different and unique image systems with their own inherent form and meaning.'