The agency of materials and technologies in the animation process is of interest to both scholars and animators. This post looks at examples of work from the Royal College of Art’s (thereafter RCA) animation archive, to highlight ways in which distributed agency has been embraced in the production of experimental student films and suggest links between these approaches and their pedagogical context.

As a tutor at the RCA, I had the pleasure in 2025 of leading a project to collate graduation films produced by students of our Animation MA over its 40-year history. The collection is accessible to current RCA students, as well as on request to internal and external researchers on an online cloud storage drive. It includes more than a thousand short animated films, and within these there are many examples of experimental films in which the agency of materials or technologies have been made visible.

Eric Herhuth (2016) has considered animation and agency in relation to Bruno Latour’s ideas around actor-network-theory. Referring to Latour’s example of a marionette and puppeteer, Herhuth points out that both have agency in the marionette’s performance: “manipulation is not a one-way street. The puppets actually make the puppeteer do certain things or manipulate them in particular ways […] the figure of the puppet shifts from presenting control and submission to presenting distributed agency” (Herhuth, 2016, p.12–13). Gabriele Budach and Gohar Sharoyan (2020, p.464) describe animation making as “an assemblage in which all parts, human and non-human, play an agentive role, in shaping the story, the story making, and the story makers, mutually transforming each other”.

Animation is often presented as human mastery of materials and technologies, and animators are associated with qualities of control, precision, and perfectionism. But animation is not always about the mastery or control of materials – it can also be a dialogue with them. In the RCA archive this can be seen in direct animation techniques, in which animators work directly onto film stock, applying materials or scratching the film. This includes films such as Christoph Simon’s Haidara (1987), in which ink is applied to processed film over live action imagery, and Stuart Hilton’s Pendulum (1991) in which Letraset and ink have been applied directly to 16mm film. Direct animation techniques are also evident in recent work, such as Hannah Wu’s 2025 graduation film 走 (zǒu) and Sonkai Zhao’s Unnamed Road (2022), which saw the animator applying objects and materials directly to film to create a piece of work that references the four elements.  

Figure 1. Film still from Unnamed Road (2022), directed and animated by Songkai Zhou.

Joe King, who has been teaching at the RCA since 2001, describes these films as part of a tradition of work which “uses the camera as a creative tool rather than purely a recording device” (King, 2025).  He observes that working with older processes and materials is “not an easy choice. We are trying to keep access to those old processes, materials and technologies, for students who want to try them, and push their capabilities” (King, 2025).

Also visible in the archive are animations that bring life to found objects. Sonia Bridge’s 2001 film Jetsam pulls materials including salt, paper, steel wool, cherry blossoms, grease and spit, bubble wrap, and tea leaves into the photographic process, exposing them directly onto film.

Alice Dunseath’s film You Could Sunbathe in this Storm (2014) uses growing crystals, ink, and plaster, to create a world with “change as the only constant” (Dunseath, 2018). Beth Walker’s 2022 film Beneath uses materials including ink, natural fibres, fabric, and paper: “I often work with organic or reactive materials, and allow myself to be guided by their unique qualities and behaviours. My process sometimes involves a period of laboratory-style investigation, to discover how a particular material might be brought to life through moving image” (Walker, 2022).

Figure 2. Film still from You Could Sunbathe in this Storm (2014), directed and animated by Alice Dunseath.

Other archive works combine analogue techniques with digital capturing, editing and effects. Francesco Coppola’s 2023 mixed media work includes the transfer of digital images onto physical materials including agar-agar, a gelatine derived from algae, that degrades the images in unpredictable, uncontrollable ways – a technique Coppola is continuing to develop in his current work.  

Figure 3. Transferral onto agar (2023), directed and animated by Francesco Coppola.

The same relinquishing of control can be seen in visible use of technology such as vision mixers. Stuart Collins 1994 film Technopervert creates a visual world where the technology is front and centre, and more recently Sam Bell’s 2017 Krell Experiment is “an exercise in uncertainty” (Bell, n.d), in which straight-ahead drawn animation is processed through a video feedback system, tethered to—and partially controlled by—a synthesiser “Krell Patch” which also produces the audio.

Figure 4. Film still from Technopervert (1994), directed and animated by Stuart Collins.

The films mentioned above are diverse in technique and outcome, but what they have in common is a tendency towards making visible the agency that the non-human actors involved in production have.

In all these films the animator becomes part facilitator and observer, making introductions between materials, setting processes in motion, and documenting outcomes, but not micro-managing the development of every element. The language of a film partly emerges from the unexpected ‘performances’ that each selected material or technology gives, with each outcome suggesting the next action. The animators also, crucially, remain directors—selecting materials and environments, deciding on lighting and lenses, on where the camera is positioned, and later, in selecting and juxtaposing shots, in adding sound, in shaping the whole.

The high occurrence of these films in the RCA archive also speaks to the approach of workshops offered by the college. King (2025) explains that some prioritise ideas of “improvisation and play”. Over the years these have included workshops in which students are asked to expose directly onto film, as well as those in which students make music from instruments that are not really instruments, that have been tampered with, or that the student has no knowledge of. He observes that these workshops encourage:

a process of exploring, and then watching and listening and seeing what fits, with no set route or set way. All of it incorporated unpredictability and surprise, but one had enough agency over the process to know the direction, and often that came with trial and error. Repetition is important: you know something is doing something you like, and so you repeat it, and know roughly what you’ll get, but you can’t predict exactly. 

(King, 2025)

In order to understand materials and processes it is valuable to explore them, to test their limits and to observe their tendencies. Experiments in which an animator emphasises the agency granted to non-human actors, in which they effectively become a creative collaborator, can enrich a creative practice. An educational environment is an ideal context in which to explore this.

References

走 (zǒu) (UK 2025; director: Hannah Wu)

Agar-agar film (UK 2023; director: Francesco Coppola)

Bell, S. (n.d.) Krell Experiment Sam Bell. [online]. Available at: https://www.shortfilmwire.com/en/embedded/film/200072134/Krell-Experiment_ [Accessed 1 November 2025]

Beneath (UK; 2022 director: Beth Walker)

Budach, G., & Sharoyan, G. (2020). Exploring ‘vibrant matter’ in animation making. Language and Intercultural Communication, Vol. 20(5), 464—481. 

Dunseath, A. (2018). You Could Sunbathe in this Storm (Slight Return) Alice Dunseath. [online]. Available at: https://www.timessquarenyc.org/tsq-arts-projects/you-could-sunbathe-in-this-storm-slight-return. [Accessed 1 November 2025]

Haidara (UK 1987; director: Christoph Simon).

Herhuth, E. (2016). The Politics of Animation and the Animation of Politics. In: animation:

an interdisciplinary journal. Vol. 11(1). 4—22.

Jetsam (UK 2002; director: Sonia Bridge)

King, J. (2025). Interview with Carla MacKinnon. United Kingdom, October 27. 

Krell Experiment (UK 2017; director: Sam Bell)

Pendulum (UK 1991; director: Stuart Hilton)

Technopervert (UK 1994; director: Stuart Collins)

Unnamed Road (UK 2022; director: Sonkai Zhao)

Walker, B. (2022). Beth Walker Statement. Available at: https://2022.rca.ac.uk/students/bethany-charlotte-victoria-walker/ [Accessed 1 November 2025]

You Could Sunbathe in this Storm (UK 2014; director: Alice Dunseath)

Dr Carla MacKinnon is a tutor in Animation at the Royal College of Art and editor of the website Exploring Animated Documentary. She holds a PhD in animated documentary from Arts University Bournemouth and has created award-winning moving image work which has been exhibited at galleries, festivals and conferences worldwide. She is also a curator and producer of interdisciplinary events.