Let Us Dance In An Imaginary World of Color and Light

Animation. It's something we are all are familiar with, and most likely it is one of the first types of video you experienced as a child of the 1990s. We all remember Warner Bros. Loony Tunes and the Disney classics such as The Lion King. Perhaps some even recall the Japanese anime feature Spirited Away. But all of these animations tell a clear story. They are linear and the characters are humanized. This type of animation is commonplace, and the artists (at least in the past) were acclaimed for their skill with a pen and pencil.

But animation does not have to be in this style to communicate some form of idea. Instead, feelings and ideas can be conveyed through series of shapes, colors, and their formation and subsequent destruction if that is what the artist so chooses. A linear narrative is not necessary in experimental animation, nor is continuity of surroundings a concern. Some experimental animation may be blatant in its conduction of ideas to the audience. Perhaps a tree grows from a sapling, into a tree, only to be covered by snow and collapse. I would take this to mean death. But what would a swath of the color green mixed with a myriad of swirling blue mean? How would you as an audience member interpret this? Is it rushing water, is it the ocean, the sky, or something else entirely? That's the thing about experimental animation. Show the film to ten different people (who may or may not necessarily be film students) and you will most likely receive ten different answers as to what the animation is attempting to convey. In my opinion this is one of the beauties of experimental animation.