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…
Norman McLaren Centenary: McLaren and Movement
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…
Norman McLaren Centenary: McLaren and Movement
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…
Health Issues and Animation
From one extreme to the other?
by Nichola Dobson • March 31, 2014 • 0 Comments
In the last few months in the UK, the mainstream press, and in particular The Guardian newspaper, have been campaigning to raise awareness of the issues of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). Alongside Change.org, the movement has been keen to encourage…
Health Issues and Animation
Secret Architecture – the construction of ‘Loop’
by Samantha Moore • March 10, 2014 • 1 Comment
The project Silent Signal, initiated by Animate Projects, funded by a Wellcome trust arts award and working with animators and scientists, is working on a number of collaborative projects using animation to explore scientific enquiry. I have been working on…
Health Issues and Animation
Exploring an Autism Condition in “Mary and Max”
by Nigel Newbutt • March 3, 2014 • 2 Comments
“I do not feel disabled or defective” (Max, Mary and Max, 2009). Fig 1 & 1a: A clearly anxious Max as he experiences sensory overload. Autism is described as a “spectrum” disorder, ranging from “classic” autism, involving severe learning difficulties,…
New Theoretical Approaches
Animation Theory vs. Theories of Animation
by Bella Honess Roe • February 24, 2014 • 3 Comments
A couple of weeks ago, I responded to an excellent post by Caroline Ruddell in which she asks ‘what of animation theory?’ I suggested that animation studies hasn’t cohered around any central questions of enquiry in the way Film Studies…
New Theoretical Approaches
The Crisis in Animation Studies
by Lauren Carr • February 17, 2014 • 4 Comments
Dig deep into the past and try remembering when family households were able to function without the Internet. Society had more patience before affordable technology was possible. Remember sending a letter to grandma and waiting weeks for a response? Or…
New Theoretical Approaches
James Ensor, Willem de Kooning, and “Visual Karaoke.”
by Jean Detheux • February 12, 2014 • 1 Comment
More and more often, I see digital images appear in various forums focusing on digital art, images that, to me, are to Art what karaoke is to Music. Simple as that Why? Because, in the Art that I “know” and…
New Theoretical Approaches
What of animation and (T)theory
by Caroline Ruddell • February 3, 2014 • 5 Comments
In 1996 Bordwell and Carroll introduced their book entitled Post Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies in the following way: ‘Our title risks misleading you. Is this a book about the end of film theory? No. It’s about the end of Theory,…