Dream Journal, May 2016-February 2017

An early experiment in employing computers to animate film. The result is a dazzling vibration of geometric forms in vivid color, an effect achieved by varying the speed at which alternate colors change, so producing optical illusions. In between these screen pyrotechnics appears a simple line form gyrating in smooth rhythm. Sound effects are created by registering sound shapes directly on the soundtrack of the film.

Norman McLaren made Scherzo early after his arrival in North America in 1939, but the film was subsequently lost. In 1984 the original materials were found and the hand-drawn images and sound were reconstituted. Picture and sound dance triple-quick in this animated version of a musical scherzo. A film without words.

In 2013, Lei Lei and Thomas Sauvin collected numbers of black-and-white photos from Chinese flea markets and imagined that all of them belonged to one fictional Chinese person. Through rendering, collage, and a cyclical process of hand coloring, scanning, and printing, connections among the photos were created.

This is one of those abstract animated films in which colored, richly textured light moves in a black, three-dimensional space. The pictures and the electronic score are unified in a strict structure made of three main sections which progressively develop three subsections. This film may look like it was made using computers or video to the uninitiated, but only animation and much optical printing are to be seen herein. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with iotaCenter and National Film Preservation Foundation in 2007.

This dazzling stop-motion animation provided Vorkapich with a forum to demonstrate complex perceptual theories related to the persistence of vision and phi phenomenon. The dance of objects and their movements before the camera lens–somewhat similar to Oskar Fischinger’s abstractions–illustrate many visual sensations playfully executed by Vorkapich.

This video art experiment and survey on human's visual and sound perception which have an influence on the way of life, national integration, and people's belief in fact. The video changes the way of human's usual perception by using a Thai ancient tale read by a calm voice, along with the annoying visual and sound.

Krešimir Zimonić's take on the underlying nature of a hard-fought soccer game.

The walls of video rental shops in Japan are lined with hundreds upon hundreds of animation DVDs, but experimental and art animation on DVD are rare. To remedy this situation, Image Forum put together this showcase of the work of contemporary avant-garde animators trained in Kyoto and Tokyo.

Someone falls off the scene and a tree is upside down. In the search for the roots, people are torn from their usual order, while in the dark connections are made. A woman tastes of the primordial soup and we end up in a system of people spinning around themselves. Only one person remains alone, but he gets unexpected comfort from somewhere.

In this child's game, a live-action boy and girl draw characters and compete who is better. The girl draws a flower and the boy draws a car that runs it over. Then a drawn lion chases a drawn girl, until it all becomes frightfully serious.

Barry Doupé’s Thalé (2009) experiments with the phenomenology of light and colour through fiber-optic flower arrangements. Doupé’s animations are inspired by the Thale Cress plant, which is commonly used in biological mutation experiments. His rotating electronic floras, which resemble neon lights, sex toys and fireworks, glow in the dark digital void. - Amy Kazymerchyk, Fabulous Festival of Fringe Film

A boom operator attempts to record the noise mushrooms make in this semi-experimental animation inspired by the world of sounds.

A contemporary man in the eye of the cyclone created by information. He finds no support for his hands and feet. It’s like in a poem by Tadeusz Rozewicz (‘falling in every direction’), he turns to dust when his time finally comes.

Replika

White circles appear and disappear on a black surface.

Short animation produced in a 3D animation course using the MAYA software.

A short animated feature which Fred Burns created with 2,000 inked, painted, and photographed images.

You Take Care Now, an early student film, is a perfect exemplar of Ann Marie Fleming's idiosyncratic vision and stands as one of her signature works. Made on 16mm, and incorporating found footage, original material, animation, and processed images (Vancouver's groundbreaking avant-garde cinema of the 1970s is a decided influence here), Fleming's film offers a visually dazzling, emotionally wrenching, oddly humorous account of two profound personal traumas.

"Frozen Jumper" begins in hit-and-run style with a pulsating textural noise. Flickering, nearly rectangular patterns join on the image plane, at first in black-and-white, bringing to mind the sprocket holes in celluloid film and, not least due to the lack of geometric precision, giving the impression of a pre-digital origin. As the soundtrack rattles on in a minimalistic way, the pattern’s twitchy dance is submerged in various warm hues such as yellow, pink, light green and light blue, which in a different rhythm and to a more agreeable music could be perceived as the signature of slightly retro psychedelia.

The bridge as the channel between worlds: between the living and the dead, between male and female, between sacred and profane.