Abstraction and meaning in the animation of Hong Kong artists

This article discusses the experimental animation works of Choi Sai-Ho, Carla Chan, Tobias Gremmler and Chris Cheung Hon-Him to probe animated abstraction as a discursive space through which meaning can be negotiated. These Hong Kong artists explore alternative, open-ended and fluid ways of meaning-making that are emerging in response to more traditional modes of moving image storytelling. In developing a narrative-abstraction vocabulary for artists and scholars to work with, what role can the works of Hong Kong artists play in shaping this, and what perspectives can these works offer for such an endeavour? A range of preoccupations with references ranging from spiritual symbolism and abstracted landscape to Chinese opera and Hong Kong architecture bring to light some of those other visions and possible modes of animated abstraction engaged with producing meaning.

Experimental animation and the neosurrealist remediation of popular music video

Once appearing to function primarily as a commercial tool for popular entertainment, the popular form of music video has recently been exposed by scholars as formally and functionally diverse, with a rich history stretching back decades before the advent of MTV. Animated music videos owe much to centuries old traditions spanning the visual, musical and performing arts, providing performative and material models that inspire contemporary video directors. Experimental animation, surrealism and music video form a matrix of historical and contemporary significance; however, few scholars have undertaken close examinations of the relations between them. John Richardson and Mathias Korsgaard show how music video directors have employed surrealist compositional strategies together with experimental animation methods, thus giving rise to challenging new forms that traverse disparate approaches to art and culture. Building upon their contributions, this article explores the continuity between experimental animation, surrealism and music video, with a view to discovering the subversive potential of this matrix. In order to probe this potential, the author examines how music video directors experiment with animation technique as a means of subversion and enrichment of popular music video. Through close analysis of music videos directed by Adam Jones, Stephen Johnson, Floria Sigismondi and Chris Hopewell, this article charts the continuity of surrealist strategy across culturally specific moments in history, thus provoking questions around the perceived functions of animated media and popular music video.

Defining experimental animation: A follow-up

This article offers further reflections on a chapter I published in the anthology Experimental Animation: From Analogue to Digital. I begin by exploring the reticence artists and critics have shown in attempting to define what experimental animation is, and I then offer a way to provide a definition without delimiting what it is or can be. Subsequent to this, three additional traits of experimental animation are added to the original list of defining features that were published in the original article. They are as follows: the subversion of unchecked assumptions about filmic experience, a willingness to potentially alienate viewers, and the application of symbolism in which viewers might not be able to discern the artist’s original intentions. Following this, the unique relationship experimental animation has with the commercial realm (notably in idents, title sequences and music videos) is also considered. Finally, the conclusion points towards the experimental animator’s creative process as a further avenue of exploration.

Improvements on the truth

My drawn animation practice has always focused on the gestural mark and messy materiality. This article is about what happened to that practice in the transition from analogue to digital animation, questioning what was lost forever and what might still be worth fighting for. This practitioner’s account of a ‘before digital, after digital’ career describes the experience of making work, as work itself changed forever. Ushered in with little reflection or resistance in the mid-1990s, the new digital doctrine slowly consumed hand-drawn 2D animation production to the point where few but the most determined independent makers keep this vital practice alive. My contention is that a reckoning on why and how we engage with digital technology is long overdue. The article will set out why – after working with digital tools for more than twenty years – I have now abandoned all but the most cursory engagement with new media tools and taken the long walk back to a material analogue practice. The ideas under discussion here can be traced back to one overriding concern – the unsolvable relationship between movement in drawing and drawing for movement. This dichotomy is unique to 2D animation, because freedom of gesture in drawing does not produce continuity of movement in animation. Mining this seam drives my independent animation practice as I try to reconcile the page and the frame.

Painterly focused Chinese ink animation: Seeing through the cultural lens of the Xiang system

Chinese ink animation has won worldwide respect for its ethereal and refined approach to ink painting. From the 1950s to 1980s, the Shanghai Animation Film Studio produced a number of award-winning ink animations. These animations share a unique traditional Chinese aesthetic based on Chinese literature and philosophy. However, the complex and long hand-made production process is one of the factors that caused the decline of Chinese ink animation following the 1980s. Since the millennium, three-dimensional ink modelling and digital painting technology have contributed to the revival of Chinese ink animation. This article summarizes the development of the production process of Chinese ink animation, together with its artistic features in both the analogue and digital age. Theoretically, this article focuses on a Chinese poetic framework, ‘the Xiang system’, as both a creative strategy for producing Chinese ink animation and an analytical lens to critique it.

Metaphors of motion and philosophies of process: A practitioner’s perspective in contemporary motion design

Contemporary motion design has become ubiquitous across all platforms of the modern media landscape, and yet even the term itself enjoys little cultural awareness and has attracted notably less scholarly attention. Like the motion graphics tradition out of which it evolved, it is an inherently hybrid practice that draws upon the histories and techniques of a broad spectrum of time-based media and, in spite of its unreservedly commercial aims, is both deeply rooted in and a concentrated distillation of experimental animation practices in particular. Drawing upon my own recent experience designing a motion sequence for a documentary feature film, this article explores the unique aesthetic qualities and metaphors of motion that characterize motion design, and ultimately seeks to define it as a distinct discipline in its own right.

The dance of the hand: Len Lye’s direct films

Len Lye’s animation has a special relationship with physical materials and the body because of the ways he drew and scratched his images directly onto film. This article considers what is unusual about his aesthetic, with its emphasis on kinaesthetic styles of viewing and on ‘physical empathy’. Tracking Lye’s film work from the 1930s through the 1950s, it draws connections with the body-oriented aspects of abstract expressionist art. It also relates the films to Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s ‘embodied’ approach to phenomenology. Today Lye’s films need to be digitized, and that transfer raises interesting questions about the differences between analogue and digital aesthetics. What happens when his films move from the ‘black box’ of the cinema to the ‘white cube’ of the gallery or museum where they are digitally presented? The article also considers Lye’s kinetic sculpture as another body-oriented form of animation, in which the motor replaces the projector. His sculpture again raises questions about mixing the analogue with the digital.