Wells: Theory of Animation

I never really knew how much thought went into animation.  Yes I may sound dumb and naive, but I thought that animation, at least the orthodox animation, was circulated around characters and narrative structure. As consistently exemplified, the Disney cartoons. All the Disney cartoons are recognizable animals and people.  Even though the characters are dressed in outfits that are unrealistic, the audience still perceives Donald Duck as a Duck and Tweety as a bird as previously stated in Well's article.  So when does animation cross the line to experimental?  Well where I get confused is if people don't recognize the shape or form of a cartoon, does it fall automatically under experimental animation.  What about those shows on the Adult Swim channel, sometimes the animators construct a cartoon that is either a blob or a meatball, but some of them aren't even recognizable.  So what if the cartoons are not perceived as known objects or characters, but have a narrative plot throughout, would that be considered experimental animation?  Wells discusses how experimental animation is more of dots, lines, colors, and sound, but has no real or known deeper meaning or message.  I disagree with that.  Yes, the "meaning" and "message" is  interpreted by each individual and there is actually no concrete message, but with certain colors, sounds, "animations" the film projects some type of motif, or reasoning behind it. If a viewer has any type of emotion for a reaction, then isn't the message sent?  I understand the message and narrative are two different things, and all though the dot on the film strip isn't going to buy milk at a grocery store, it still can bounce around to a beat and then stay still or do any type of action.  With that pattern, viewers start to feel for whatever is on screen, for this example, the dot, and starts analyzing the actions of the dots.  Of course we analyze everything, that's what we do best!  Even though animation is broken up into orthodox, developmental, and experimental, I still feel as if all these approaches and forms stand on ambiguous grounds.

Mrs. Synesthesia and Mr. Cymatics

Synesthesia. After reading up on what that term actually means, experimental films started to make more sense.  In ancient greek the term "Synesthesia" means "together."  This pertains to stimulation of the senses correlating with color, sound, and movement. Aha! It now makes somewhat sense. In experimentals, specifically the films that incorporate manipulation to the film stock, I didn't understand the cause or the meaning to why these certain shapes and colors related to the sound and movement.  Well, now that there is a coined term.... it makes the meaning have more of an understanding.  Sound does alter the way we look at certain objects or images.  For example, Norman McLaren's film that was shown to us, unfortunately I don't remember the name of it, the shapes of images moved to the Jazz music.  Similar to the topic of cymatics, certain objects, such as sand and water are influenced by the vibrations of sound.  Although the images on film strips are not truly influenced by the vibrations of sound, the filmmaker can alter the movement of the image to match the sound they chose to use in their film. Such as a line bouncing or "dancing" to the Jazz notes.  There is always a motivation or reason behind the certain images, their movements, and the sound that is projected in films.  
      Cymatics focuses more on the vibrations of objects caused by sound.  And although the Jurassic Park scene of the dinosaur's footsteps vibrating the the cup of water on the table comes to mind, it's not quite there with cymatics. Usually to demonstrate the theory of cymatics, sand and water is used.  Patterns of sand and water alter to the different vibrations and when the vibrations increase the pattern of sand alters into crazy shapes.  Stupid question.... Is that what visual stimulations of songs do to the bass of the music? Ya know when you hear a dub step song and you see those images going along with the vibrations of the song. I guess that is an example of cymatics....more so with technology than nature.

Reaction to Norman McLaren's film:
"I found this experimental very captivating and I may sound far fetched, but I felt like this film circulated around movement, more specifically dance.  The filmmaker introduces two separate images and combines them throughout his film.  Also, with the incorporation of Jazz and matching the movement of images with the beat, felt as if the subject of dance motivated the piece. Then again, nature and man made objects, such as houses, would flash on the screen.  I liked the art (images) in the film, but the piece was too long and started repeating itself too much. The music did somewhat of the same thing.  It was difficult to see al the flashing images and confusion was certainly present.  Job well done! I could never think of such creative images, which almost could serve as a cartoon."