Norman McLaren infamously posits that he probably became a filmmaker because he had been unable to be a dancer or choreographer. While one can argue that the underlying concern of his work is movement, one can also posit that McLaren’s…
Norman McLaren Centenary: McLaren and Movement
Animating Animation: Abstraction and Embodiment in McLaren’s films and dance tribute NORMAN
by Crystal Chan • April 22, 2014 • 1 Comment
Norman McLaren said “every film is a kind of dance”[1] and that “an abstract film has much greater affinity to music, ballet and dance than it has to any kind of abstract painting.”[2] He said he might have wanted to…
3D or not 3D?
by Alison Reiko Loader • April 14, 2014 • 2 Comments
It seems unimaginable that Norman McLaren might have once relinquished animation for still imagery. Perhaps more shocking still, the illustrious Scot had already begun his decades long career at the National Film Board of Canada when a new non-moving vocation…
Seeing Music Move: Norman McLaren’s Direct Animation and Jazz
by Lilly Husbands • April 7, 2014 • 0 Comments
Direct animation possesses certain inherent qualities, such as immediacy, accelerated kinesis, and improvisational flow that I would like to suggest can correspond isomorphically to the extemporised uptempo meters of particular forms of jazz music. Gestalt theorist Rudolf Arnheim describes the…