Is exper­i­men­tal ani­ma­tion on the rise?

“Exper­i­men­tal ani­ma­tion is the term we use because oth­ers won’t do,” explains artist and ani­ma­tor Edwin Ros­tron, cre­ator of Edge of Frame, a blog turned event series focus­ing on the more mar­gin­al forms of exper­i­men­tal film and ani­ma­tion. ​“Peo­ple get quite bogged down with ter­mi­nol­o­gy, try­ing to define what is and what isn’t ani­ma­tion. A lot of peo­ple who make work that you could call ani­ma­tion don’t real­ly see it that way. It’s maybe part of a paint­ing prac­tise thats evolved into mov­ing image, or draw­ing brought to the screen.” Rostron’s lat­est event, Edge of Frame Week­end, reflect­ed this inter­dis­ci­pli­nar­i­ty, fea­tur­ing diverse pro­grammes of work made by artists arriv­ing from all sorts of direc­tions and films that came in wild­ly vary­ing shapes and forms.

Some of the most cap­ti­vat­ing films were those that utilised direct ani­ma­tion tech­niques to empha­sise the mate­ri­al­i­ty of film as an object or the phys­i­cal­i­ty of the process­es, objects and sur­faces involved in their pro­duc­tion. The most dra­mat­ic of which may be cam­era-less film Moth­light, for which Stan Brakhage fas­tened moth wings, plant life and oth­er nat­ur­al detri­tus to strips of edit­ing tape. When ran through a con­tact print­er onto 16mm film and pro­ject­ed, his film con­jures rapid­ly flick­er­ing, danc­ing life­forms from this dead mate­r­i­al, rean­i­mat­ing the frozen pieces as if by magic.

In a sim­i­lar vein, for Land­fill 16 Jen­nifer Reeves took dis­card­ed 16mm mate­r­i­al from anoth­er project, buried it under­ground until it began to decom­pose, before exhum­ing it and hand paint­ing abstract uni­vers­es over the dis­rupt­ed forms, cre­at­ing cos­mic majesty out of decay. Both films inter­ro­gate what it might mean to work with hand-processed, phys­i­cal mate­ri­als; find­ing the sub­lime by rein­ter­pret­ing sta­t­ic, ugly mate­ri­als and mak­ing them dynam­ic and expressive.

Two more recent­ly made films also focused on extract­ing the ecsta­t­ic from ordi­nary sources, using the fun­da­men­tal prop­er­ties of light as a basis for find­ing new ways to cre­ate visu­al­ly sat­is­fy­ing expe­ri­ences out of sim­ple means. Stephen Broomer’s Queens Quay blends a wash of radi­at­ing light out of lay­ered strips of bright­ly hued cel­lu­loid, the rapid­ly vary­ing images fus­ing in and out of each oth­er to cre­ate beau­ti­ful geo­met­ric forms that rever­ber­ate along­side a gen­tly rap­tur­ous opti­cal score. In Some­thing Between Us, pris­mat­ic light effects are drawn from ordi­nary objects, Jodie Mack pho­tograph­ing jew­ellery, water and oth­er reflec­tive mate­ri­als at angles that pro­duce glitzy prisms of coloured light, then cut­ting them into a kinet­ic, synaes­thet­ic bal­let. In both, plain objects are ani­mat­ed in a fash­ion that uncov­ers their secret glim­mer­ing beau­ty, water made into wine.

Else­where, some oth­er con­nect­ing fac­tors could be drawn between the best works in a wide reach­ing, qual­i­ty offer­ing. Many films used pat­tern­ing as their main­stay, draw­ing splen­dour out of animation’s abil­i­ty to morph and mutate repet­i­tive ele­ments, but two dig­i­tal mael­stroms made 35 years apart did so par­tic­u­lar­ly effec­tive­ly. In mod­ern artist Peter Burr’s Green | Red recog­nis­able visu­al ele­ments emerge from a radi­at­ing stream of pix­e­lat­ed forms, coloured forms blend­ing hyp­not­i­cal­ly in and out of a mono­chro­mat­ic pix­el mass whilst a pul­sat­ing tech­no sound­track guides the increas­ing­ly fre­net­ic tide.

Sev­en­ties com­put­er art pio­neer Lar­ry Cuba’s pre­cise­ly struc­tured Two Space fea­tures sim­i­lar mono­chrome pul­sa­tions, as a short pro­grammed sequence shows a white dot­ted chain whirling and swirling against a black field, chore­o­graphed neat­ly to the rhyth­mic sounds of ancient Javanese game­lan music. Pro­duced twelve times, each repeat­ed pat­tern tes­sel­lates mes­mer­i­cal­ly into the oth­er, the sim­plic­i­ty and syn­chronic­i­ty pro­duc­ing an entranc­ing effect.

A lot of the best work also used col­lage to impres­sive effect. Stu­art Hilton’s mixed media work Save Me uses a cacoph­o­nous array of found sounds and images as the basis for abstract explo­ration, col­lat­ing them togeth­er like a song by The Books. Scrawl­ing and paint­ing hun­dreds of visu­al inter­pre­ta­tions to accom­pa­ny this cavort­ing aur­al can­vas, his film is chaot­ic but imag­i­na­tive. Sim­i­lar­ly Robert Breer’s Tri­al Bal­loons mix­es pho­tog­ra­phy, film and ani­ma­tion, often all at once, draw­ing and past­ing mate­r­i­al over record­ed sce­nar­ios to add extra flavour to the real. A kind of unpre­dictable home-movie mon­tage, Breer’s odd­i­ty is joy­ful, unpre­dictable and exu­ber­ant, packed with the colour, humour and tex­ture of a life made more inter­est­ing by art.

Oth­er high­lights were (rel­a­tive­ly) more tra­di­tion­al, involv­ing styl­is­tic or nar­ra­tive shifts applied to tra­di­tion­al hand drawn ani­ma­tion tech­niques. Jonathan Hodgson’s Night­club draws upon sketch­es made in Liv­er­pool drink­ing holes, depict­ing the social strug­gles that take place with­in sub­cul­tures, visu­al­is­ing the anx­ious posi­tion of the indi­vid­ual with­in a crowd. With a expres­sive­ly neu­rot­ic art style and bril­liant, impos­ing music pro­duced by the artist him­self, Hodgson’s film pul­sates with the atmos­phere of the exag­ger­at­ed sce­nario it depicts.

A tonal oppo­site, Yoriko Mizushiri’s Futon too has a sin­gu­lar, dis­tinc­tive art style, but one that’s sur­face is as soft as the jud­der­ing edges of Hodgson’s film are hard. Gen­tly flow­ing cozy imagery drifts in and out of abstrac­tion, as Mizushiri’s sleep­ing pro­tag­o­nist dozi­ly and sen­su­ous­ly awak­ens from a deep slum­ber, a dream log­ic drift­ing into her wak­ing real­i­ty. A film of soft tones and clean lines, Futon is sub­tle, yet com­mand­ing, rich with nuance and mean­ing despite it’s mut­ed, soporif­ic tone.

“The word ani­ma­tion has bag­gage that can put peo­ple off, or make them think of cer­tain things,” says Ros­tron, What is clear from Edge of Frame is that the con­no­ta­tions we can have are often wrong, and the lim­i­ta­tions we impose are just that, lim­it­ing. For Ros­tron, ​“there is a gen­er­al lack of famil­iar­i­ty with ani­ma­tion that leads to it being mis­com­mu­ni­cat­ed.” As a prac­ti­tion­er him­self, he under­stands how this could be done bet­ter than most, and sold out screen­ings tes­ti­fy to his suc­cess. Delv­ing into the many offer­ings of Edge of Frame demon­strates the rewards of tak­ing a chance, of wel­com­ing strange ideas and expe­ri­enc­ing new things.