Lines and Interruptions in Experimental Film and Video
- Submitting institution
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Anglia Ruskin University Higher Education Corporation
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 508
- Type
- C - Chapter in book
- DOI
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10.1007/978-3-319-73873-4_2
- Book title
- Experimental and Expanded Animation: New Perspectives and Practices
- Publisher
- Springer
- ISBN
- 978-3-319-73872-7
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- -
- Year of publication
- 2018
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Nicky Hamlyn and Vicky Smith asked me to contribute an essay to their edited book, Experimental and Expanded Animation: New Perspectives and Practices. My essay, which opens the book, is an analysis of a range of experimental films and videos in which continuous and interrupted lines are emblematic and representative of animation’s principle quality: the impression of movement that derives from a series discrete frames. The essay aims to shed light on the aesthetics of animation through comparison with the strategies and enquiries in the corresponding field of experimental cinema.
The essay focuses on a range of contemporary works by several international artists, but also lights on a number of historical precedents and offers a perspective on associated concepts and aspirations. The first proposition in the essay is that images of continuous lines and vectors in experimental films and videos reflect the impression of motion and continuity associated with these mediums/technologies, and that they are often aligned with a bold, utopian optimism. The second proposition is that images of segmented lines evoke the intervals between film/video frames and often signal interruptions in the flow of moving-image media. The essay looks closely at several experimental films and videos that reflect these two poles, as well as works which undermine the binary opposition of continuity and segmentation. Key artists whose work is discussed include Viking Eggeling, John and James Whitney, Anthony McCall and Paul Sharits, alongside lesser-known contemporary filmmakers and artists such as LIA, Jennifer Nightingale and Juliana Borinski. The wider conceptual framework for the discussion of lines and interruption involves the discussion of ideas in Bergson, Deleuze, Sean Cubitt and Tim Ingold.
Experimental and Expanded Animation: New Perspectives and Practices won the 2019 Norman McLaren/Evelyn Lambart Award for Best Scholarly Book in Animation, presented by the Society for Animation Studies.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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