Deadline: January 26, 2024

Guest curator: Karen Bosy

I attended the roundtable of the prize-winning artists at Ars Electronica’s Expanded Animation session last year, and the discussion on how the surface is conceptualized in their works really captured my attention. While the horizontal plane can act as the point of entry to the image, the discussion was on the ways in which a spatial environment could be presented as grounded, without representing it as ‘the ground’. I am an artist in the final stages of my doctoral research, and I use video in my practice. Although my main research area is structural film, my research practice shares concerns with animation. In a similar way to experimental film and animation, my works can be thought of as being a leap into ‘the unknown’ for the viewer as they present a spatial environment in which anything can happen. The artists’ debates at Ars Electronica’s Expanded Animation session made me contemplate how artists and scholars discuss, animation strategies in for example VR technology to question the nature of what can act as a ground. Considering this, for this theme I seek contributions that look from any point of view into the role ‘the surface’ plays in the field of animation.

I, together with the editors on the blog, are interested in posts that consider the spatial environment offered by animated works in connection with the role of surfaces in these works. We invite contributions that examine from any perspective how the techniques and technologies used in animation shape the viewer’s initial encounter with the moving image work, the way they effect the entry point of orientation in the image, and the ways in which this contributes to the production of meaning making. The contributions could include the role of the frame of the image and the surface plane of the image in animated works. Contributions that explore the role of surfaces more generally in animated works are also welcomed.

Topics may include, but are not limited to, any discussions or analyses of:

• The role the ‘horizontal plane’ plays in animated works to establish, intensify or change the animation’s spatial environment;
• The role that the spatial environment can take when the horizontal plane is visually absent in the animated work;
• Any idea of surfaces in animated works, including the surface of its objects;
• The idea of an ‘entry point’ to the images in animated works with regard to orientation within its spatial environment;
• The nature of what can act as ‘ground’ in animation;
• The role of the image frame and the surface plane of the images in animated works.

We welcome posts that are between 600 and 900 words discussing any aspect of the above topics. Please forward the contribution as a Word document, and contributors are encouraged to include clips, and at least one image to visually support their post (less than 2 MB in size per image). Please also include a short bio (100 words max) and 3 keywords. All permissions are the responsibility of the contributor. 

Please contact guest curator Karen Bosy via karen.bosy@network.rca.ac.uk with submissions or questions – and CC editors Carmen Hannibal and Anastasiia Gushchina on blog@animationstudies.org.