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Animation precedes the invention of photography and the cine camera by several decades. It is an art form in which dynamic image and sound may be synthesised completely out of nothing but a thought. (see quote, right)
Animation is 100% artifice, and as such, the synthesis of movement through the sequential use of small fragments of time, (which gives rise to this extraordinary illusion), is open to manipulation in extraordinary ways.
Animation is the most nimble of mediums. It has survived the mechanical 'persistence of vision' toys popular in the 19th century; found expression as an art form in cinema; it was the means by which to experiment with time-based art and cinematic forms to present new visual vocabularies; it was brilliantly positioned to pioneer the use of computers to create moving images from numbers; it has demystified complex processes; visualised scientific phenomena and provided simulation models to help us understand the world; it has become an essential ingredient in multimedia content; it is integral to the computer games industry; it increasingly underpins all special effects in motion picture production; and it has provided content in an ideal form to distribute across a bandwidth poor networked environment.
Animation is an art form which can come from anywhere and which can go to anywhere; from a large production team working in a highly specialised studio, or from a lone individual working out of a garage, to an Imax Cinema screen several metres across, or to a mobile
(Serge) Eisenstein, greatest film director for me of all time. The only film director, probably, you can put up against
Beethoven and Michael Angelo and not be embarrassed, a man with extraordinary vision, great sense of knowledge of his equipment and its potential and he's there making and creating the beginnings of cinema vocabulary. He goes very rarely because he hardly ever left Russia, he goes to South America to make a film about Mexican culture and he stops off in
California and he meets Walt Disney and he say s “Walt Disney is the only true film maker”.
You have to stand back a minute and think what does this man mean, this great great film director but the essence is that Walt
Disney starts from ground zero. He starts from a blank sheet...
We've created a cinema which is based upon memesis. We have a camera which basically records reality as we know it.
There are variations on a theme and you can rework that reality to a certain extent, but in a sense, film making, the cinema, was invented at ground Richter number six rather than zero, so in a sense we've gone too far too fast, and I think there's a way that the real world is going to be more fascinating, more exciting, more dangerous than ever you can put on a cinema screen. from an interview with Peter Greenaway,
2001

phone screen a few centimetres wide.
Animation can be as intimate and personal as a stick figure doodle jiggling in the corner of a dog-eared school exercise book come flip book, or as expansive and public as animated laser lights splashed upon a cityscape (Hong
Kong Harbour 'Symphony Of Lights' project -
Art Director, Lloyd Weir, AIM 1996 graduate,
Laservision NSW).
Animation has the capacity to: entertain, exaggerate, simplify, abstract, reveal complex processes, clarify difficult-to-understand concepts, visualise data, be a vehicle for humorous writing, sell product, be an art form, create slapstick sight gags, be a vehicle for insightful social comment, portray the human condition, and tackle difficult and uncomfortable subject manner.
Animation is....
The amplification of an idea through simplification and abstraction; a sight gag timed to perfection; a visual poem; a moving painting; extraordinary sublime moments in the orchestration of moving image and sound; throw-away sick slapstick humour designed for the moment; stories that remain with you forever; time-based imagery that can be fantastically surreal because of its unique process of realisation; a journey through the human body and other datascapes; the invisible made visible; informative dynamic graphics that monitor critical processes; an animated neon sign. At its best, animation is an exquisite character performance synthesised at the end of a pencil, or increasingly through the sweep and click of a computer mouse, that would otherwise win an award for best acting.
Little else compares with the thrill of breathing life into characters that might never have existed but for your imagination, or to move a large audience of strangers to laugh out loud at their antics, or to keep a person interactively engaged with them and the worlds you have invented, for hours on end.
'Hello' - a multi award winning animated film by 2003 AIM graduate, Jonathan Nix.
Laservision's Hong Kong Harbour
'Symphony Of Lights' project. Art Director,
AIM 1996 graduate, Lloyd Weir .
'Symbiosis' by AIM research candidate,
Mark Guglielmetti. An immersive stereoscopic virtual space. Co-recipient of the ATOM award for "Outstanding Virtual
Experience" 2002 for the immersive digital art installation.
"Animation film visualises the invisible. The creative imagination gives life to the abstract and the amorphous"
- Veronique Steeno
"I have given twelve Mickey-Mouse-movies as a present for the Fuhrer at Christmas!
He is being pleased about it. He is absolute happy about this treasure".
A diary entry of Goebbels commenting on
Hitler's enthusiasm for Mickey Mouse
Cartoons - 20 Dec 1937:

Annemarie Szeleczky used sticks of macaroni and torn paper (left) and the
Aussie breakfast spread, 'Vegiemite' for the experimental animation in her research project - "The Development of
Experimental Animation Techniques Using
Mixed Media, Spatial Layering and
Gestural Artwork."
Almost anything can be brought to life and be imbued with personality, twigs, clay, drawings, objects, computer meshes, and, of course, anything becomes possible in the world of animation. It can entertain, explain and fascinate. In all its wondrous forms from the traditional 'bonk 'em on the head' cartoon styles, to TV commercials, sophisticated narrative works and simulations, to experimental, digitally composited, special effects driven and art films, animation is a powerful vehicle for ideas.
The Centre of Animation & Interactive Media embraces the broadest definition of animation.
Animation - linear, interactive or real-time - is timeless, nimble and future proof - and is currently, very 'hot'.
Read on....

Roots:
The word 'animation' is derived from anima , the
Latin word for soul or spirit. The verb 'to animate' literally means ' to give life to '.
From his earliest artworks, hunting scenes sketched in ochre on a cave wall, to highly refined Greek sculptures, mankind has always attempted to imbue his art with expressions of life by depicting his subjects as if caught in a frozen moment in time suggestive of broader preceding and following actions.
Egotistical man placed himself at the centre of the universe. He has always believed in the possibility of creating life - of playing god. Man has used his technology as an agent to help realise this desire in order to become ruler of all nature.
Automata:
History is rich with descriptions of attempts to imitate life by mechanical means in the form of hydraulic, pneumatic, or clockwork operated biological automata. Automata (or automatons - a machine which is relatively self-operating and capable of performing multiple complex movements on its own without the need for human control) had its greatest period of development following the rise of mechanicism with the revival of Greek culture during the
Renaissance. There were, for example, isolated descriptions of talking heads claimed to have been constructed by Albertus Magnus, Roger
Bacon, Gerbert, and Robert Grosseteste.
Perhaps of greater significance was the mechanical lion of da Vinci and the two automata created by Johannes Muller, called
Regiomontanus (1436-1476). One of these was the fabled eagle which was claimed to have escorted the Emperor Maximilian to the city gates of Nuremberg.
The first android, a completely mechanical figure which simulated a living human or animal, operating with apparently responsive action, is believed to have been constructed by Hans
A mechanical Duck by Jacques Vaucanson circa 1730s "an artificial duck of gilt brass which drinks, eats, flounders in water, digests and excretes like a live duck"
The Writer - a mechanical doll made in carved wood by Jaquet-Droz in 1772 which had the ability to write. At 28 inches tall, it gave an unusual impression of life and was presented to every court in Europe. Some argue that it is the most perfectly developed automaton writer in the world.

Bullmann of Nuremberg (?-1535). Bullmann reportedly produced a number of extremely ingenious figures of men and women that moved and played musical instruments.
These early automata were mechanical devices that seemed to demonstrate lifelike behaviour.
They took advantage not only of gears, but also of gravity, hydraulics, pulleys and sunlight - the effect could be dazzling, as with the extraordinary clock of Berne created in 1530.
This massive timepiece hourly disgorged a dazzling pageantry of automata figures.
One of the most famous waterworks of the seventeenth century was that constructed at the chateau at Heilbrunn in about 1646. It featured various animated hydromechanical devices. A mechanical theatre was installed here in 1725 by
Lorenz Rosenegge, a craftsman of Nuremberg. It featured 256 figures, 119 of which were animated by means of a single water turbine. A horizontal axis operating a series of cams regulated the movements of the figures by means of copper wires. The wheelwork consists of wooden wheels with iron teeth and pinions. A powerful hydraulic organ provides background music and covers the noise of the mechanism.
Just as the waterworks and grottoes of the
Renaissance gardens were tangible revivals of the hydraulic and pneumatic devices of the ancient Greek culture, some of the same influence filtered into the field of clockmaking.
The first conversion from the hydraulic and pneumatic to the purely mechanical automata, occurred in Europe with the advent of the clockmaker who made public and astronomical clocks with moving figurines.
Waltzing Couple - circa 1850 by
Frenchman Alexandre Nicolas Theroude.
Theroude started a wholesale toyselling company but after the 1830 Revolution which affected Parisian luxury industries, he shifted his focus away from making ordinary toys to become one of the foremost mechanical toy-makers in Paris applying his skill to the making of many large and magnificent automata.
It was a short step to a combination of the pinned cylinder and the spring-driven clockwork to provide the sound of living things and of musical instruments in automata. This combination made possible a great variety of developments in the late seventeenth and during the eighteenth centuries. The most notable of these were the
The Modern Compendium of Miniature
Automata by the Lycette Bros, Melbourne,
Australia. http://web.archive.org/web/2006082815070
0/http://www.lycettebros.com/automata/ androids constructed in the mid-eighteenth century by Jacques Vaucanson (1709-1782), who brought the production of automata to its highest point of development. Vaucanson is
Mechanical automata is alive and kicking all over the Internet in the form of various kinetic artworks as well as cardboard and wooden kits and private automata commissions. The above is just one example of a cardboard kit which can produce

unquestionably the most import inventor in the history of automata, as well as one of the most important figures in the history of machine
Flying Pig Paper Animation Kits http://www.flying-pig.co.uk/index.php technology. Although he was responsible for pioneering in the development of machine tools
Make your own Automata and later inspired the work of Sir Henry http://web.archive.org/web/20060828150700/http:
Maudslay and others, it was, ironically enough, //automata.co.uk/ his automata -- which occupied the briefest sophisticated like-like movement. interlude in his life -- which brought him permanent fame and fortune.
Born in 1709 in Grenoble, France, Vaucanson exhibited great mechanical ability at a very early age. After having attended the oratory college at
Juilly he studied with the Jesuits at Grenoble, and in 1725 joined the order of Minims of Lyon.
During his training period, however, Vaucanson indulged his mechanical interests by creating automatically flying angels. This impelled the provincial of the order to destroy his makeshift workshop, and Vaucanson used the incident as an excuse to to be relieved of his clerical vows.
Vaucanson moved to Paris and, in direct contrast with his recent religious life, gave himself up to a life of debauchery while he undertook the studies of mechanics, music, and anatomy. He developed an interest in the study of medicine and attempted to construct a "moving anatomy" which reproduced the principal organic functions.
Debts, illness, and eventually boredom caused him to abandon the project. He went on to the construct his famous androids, which made him wealthy and famous throughout Europe.
In 1735 Vaucanson began to formulate plans for the construction of the first android, which was to be a life-sized figure of a musician, dressed in a rustic fashion and playing eleven melodies on its flute, moving the levers realistically by its fingers and blowing into the instrument with its mouth. In
October 1737 the automaton was completed and exhibited first at the fair of Saint-Germain and later at Longueville. All Paris flocked to see the mechanical masterpiece with the human spirit; the press was extremely favorable, and
Vaucanson was launched upon his career.
Vaucanson's third and most famous automaton was "an artificial duck of gilt brass which drinks, eats, flounders in water, digests and excretes

like a live duck" (see figure top right). It was
Vaucanson's intention to create in this duck the
"moving anatomy" that he had visualized once before. Accordingly, the figure of the duck was produced full size of gilt brass in a simplified form, the body pierced with openings to permit the public to observe the process of digestion.
The complexity of this duck was enormous - there were over four hundred moving pieces in a single wing.
Just as spring-wound clockwork made possible mechanical music for automata, it also made possible the reproduction of the sound of words by mechanical means. In the seventeenth century Kircher had affirmed that it was possible to produce a head which moved the eyes, lips, and tongue, and, by means of the sounds which it emitted, appeared to be alive. A similar project was attempted in 1705 by Valentin Merbitz, rector of the Kreuzschule of Dresden, who devoted five years to it. The next major advance in this field was made in about 1770 by Friedrich von Knauss of Vienna, who constructed four speaking heads. That his project was not completely successful is attested to by the fact that in 1779 the Academy of Sciences in St.
Petersburg used the production of a successful speaking head as the theme for a contest for mechanicians and organ manufacturers, specifying that the machine be capable of speaking the five vowels. - The Turing Test of its day for clocksmiths and mechanical engineers?
The most spectacular of all automata that have survived until the present day are The Writer,
The Artist, and The Musician produced by Pierre
Jacquet-Droz (1771-1790) and his son Henry-
Louis (1753-1791) of Geneva. Father and son combined all the technical developments known in their time in an effort to produce a machine that faithfully imitated a human being, and their efforts were as successful as any have ever been. The Writer, a life-size and lifelike figure of a boy seated as a desk, is capable of writing any message of up to 40 letters in length. (above right)
-

Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism,
1895.
Boilerplate Man and Steam Man - Amazing
Robots of the Victorian Era - Fact or fiction? You decide:
With a public fascination for the newly discovered force of electricity, fictional writing suggested that pieces of dead flesh sewn together could be 'animated' into life just as severed frog legs could be kicked into a reflex action by a crude battery in a science laboraty demonstration.
Having discarded the earlier technologies of hydraulics, pneumatics, clockwork, which where thought to hold the key, man continues his quest to create life through robotics and electronics, and with more abstract notions of life using computers to create artificial life (AI), autonomous systems, Celluar Automata and nanotechnology. Man now plays directly with the building blocks of life itself via genetic engineering.
Nowhere is this obsession to play god and create worlds and to populate them with artificial autonomous life forms more in evidence than in computer games such as "The World of War
Craft".
Animators are also engaged in this same elusive quest.
Read on....
Sources and Other References:
Mechanical Theatre http://www.cabaret.co.uk/
Gallery of Automata

http://web.archive.org/web/20060828150700/http://www.nyu.edu
/pages/linguistics/courses/v610051/gelmanr/ling.html
Automata - Agents of Life Within http://web.archive.org/web/20060828150700/http://www.calresc
o.org/automata.htm
The Role of Automata in the History of Technology - By Silvio Bedini http://web.archive.org/web/20060828150700/http://xroads.virgin
ia.edu/~DRBR/b_edini.html
Automata Theory - David Weir http://web.archive.org/web/20060828150700/http://www.kornai.
com/MatLing/aut.html
Cellular Automata - "Artificial Life : The Quest for a New Creation" -
Steven Levy http://web.archive.org/web/20060828150700/http://www.brunel.
ac.uk/depts/AI/alife/al-spect.htm
Digital Immortality http://web.archive.org/web/20060828150700/http://home.att.net/
~leefrank/digital/define.html
Spooky programming stuff http://web.archive.org/web/20060828150700/http://www.csee.um
bc.edu/~squire/reference/automata_def.shtml
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THE SYNTHESES OF MOTION - Optical Toys
Animation - as we might understand it as a technical process of synthesising motion from a series of static images - precedes the invention of the cinematograph by several decades. It has its roots in the numerous parlour-game toys popular in the early 1800s which experimented with persistence of vision effect known as the Phi phenomenon.
One toy of the times which demonstrated this effect was the Thaumatrope accredited to three different people,
Dr Fitton of London, Peter Roget and/or London physicist John Ayrton Paris. However it is known that
Paris used his device to show the Phi phenomenon to the Royal College of Physicians in 1824. Its consisted of a disc with an image painted on each side. When the disc was spun by pulling on a twisted pair of strings, the images seemed to be combined - a bird on one side of the disc would appear in the empty cage on the other side. 'Trope' comes from the Greek word for 'things that turn'. 'Thauma' means wondrous, therefore a thaumatrope is a 'turning marvel' or 'wonder turner'.
Two important novelties of the day which harnessed the persistence of vision effect were invented simultaneously and independently during 1832. Joseph
Plateau (Ghent, Belgium) who coined his toy the
Phenakistiscope (Greek for 'deceptive view'), while
Professor Simon Ritter von Stampfer of the
Polytechnical Institute (Vienna, Austria) called his invention the Stroboscope ('apparition-box-viewer').
These devices were also known under other names such as: Fantascope, Phantamascope, Magic Disc or
Kaleidorama.
These toys had a disc carrying a sequence of images set in a ring around the circumference. When the disc was spun, the drawings were viewed through small slits cut into the disc which provided the visual interruptions needed for the eye to meld the images together thus creating the impression of motion.
The Phenakistiscope disc is mounted on a spindle and viewed through the slots with the images facing a mirror.
A person looking through the slits from the back of the disc would see a moving image reflected in the mirror.
The Stroboscope (not illustrated here) had a separate counter spinning disc for the viewing slots and it was possible to see the movement without the use of a mirror. The discs of the day were either abstract
The Thaumatrope
(roll over the bird to activate)
John Paris used his thaumatrope invention (1824) to demonstrate the persistence of vision phenomenon to the
Royal College of Physicians
(roll over the bird to activate) http://web.archive.org/web/2006082813
3910/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persi stence_of_vision http://web.archive.org/web/2006082813
3910/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phi_p henomenon http://web.archive.org/web/2006082813
3910/http://www.grandillusions.com/percept.htm
The Phenakistiscope needed a mirror on

patterns or performers such as jugglers or acrobats.
which to see the animating images through slits in the disc.
The Zoetrope invented by William George
Horner in 1834 needed no mirror to view its images.
An actual Phenakistiscope disc circa 1833. Roll over the above image to active this digital version which has far more visual clarity than could be obtained by viewing the images through the slits of the actual apparatus.
The Zoetrope was invented by William George
Horner in 1834. He named his device Daedalum or
'wheel of the devil'. This optical toy was forgotten for about 30 years until it was discovered and almost simultaneously patented in 1867 by William F. Lincoln,
USA and in England by Milton Bradley. It was from
Lincoln that the device received its new name
Zoetrope, meaning 'wheel of life' from the Greek word
'zoo' for animal life and 'trope' for 'things that turn'.
Horner's Zoetrope was an adaptation of the principles of the Phenakistoscope. However it was more convenient than Plateau's invention in that it eliminated the need for a mirror and allowed several people to view the motion at one time. It was constructed of an open-top drum into which was placed a hand drawn sequence of pictures on a strip of paper facing inwards. The outside of the drum had slits cut into the cylindrical surface. When the drum was spun on a central axis, the images could be viewed through the slits giving rise to the illusion of movement. To see a newspaper advertisement of the day <click here>
For the work of comtemporay artists working with
The Praxinoscope, invented in 1877 by the
Frenchman Charles Emile Reynaud, used mirrors instead of slits to produce a clearer image.

modern Zoetropes,
<click here>
Versions of history often tend to be Western centric. It is also reported that an unknown Chinese inventor created a similar device around 180 - if true, that would push the history of synthesised motion back by
17 centuries!
In 1877, Frenchman Charl es Émile Reynaud, painter of lantern slides, refined the principle of the Zoetrope to use reflected light creating the Praxinoscope
(patented December 1877). This was the first device to overcome the blurred distortion caused by viewing through narrow fast moving slots and it quickly replaced the Zoetrope in popularity. Like the Zoetrope, a paper strip of pictures is placed inside a shallow outer cylinder, so that each picture is reflected by the inner set of mirrors. The number of mirror facets equaled the number of pictures on the paper strip.
When the outer cylinder rotates, the quick succession of images reflected in the mirrors gives the illusion of movement. This produced a image that was more brilliant and sharper than with any previous device.
The following year Reynaud added a patent supplement for an improvement - the Praxinoscope
Theatre. The mirror drum and cylinder were set in a wooden box with a glass-covered viewing aperture which reflected a card printed with a background. The moving subjects - a juggler, clowns, a steeple-chase - were printed on a black band, and appeared superimposed on a suitable scene. The background artwork could be changed (see below, right)
Reynaud managed to adapt the principle behind his
Praxinoscope to project a series of pictures onto a screen at a size suitable for presentation to a large audience. On 28 October 1892 Reynaud premièred
'Pauvre Pierrot' at his 'Theatre Optique' in Paris 1892 - the very first moving pictures shown publicly via projection onto a screen. To see a poster for this event, <click here>
The standard Praxinoscope could only accommodate a second or two of animation because of the limited number of pictures contained on the paper strip.
Reynaud, a painter of lantern slides, painted images on gelatine squares fastened between leather bands, with holes in metal strips between each picture. These holes engaged in pins on a revolving wheel, so that
Tfaceted mirrors used in Reynaud's
Praxinoscope.
An adaptation of the Praxinoscope the
'Praxinoscope Theatre' allowed a background image to be combined with the animating images reflected in the mirrors in the centre of the device.
"Animated Projections" proclaims this poster for Reynaud's patented adaption to his
Pranxinoscope to project moving images onto a wall. "A new optical toy... uses an ordinary lamp"

each picture was aligned with a facet of the mirror drum. This was the first commercial use of sprocket hole perforations that was to be so important for successful cinematography and anticipated other cinematic devices such as the spool of film. A background image from a separate magic lantern slide was projected over the animated figures (right).
Reynaud set up this apparatus behind a translucent screen and gave most of the presentations himself, deftly manipulating the picture bands to and fro to extend the sequences, creating a twelve or fifteen minute performance from the 500 gelatine images.
Other titles prepared for his 'Theatre Optique' ran to an astonishing 700 images.
A magic latern show as entertainment for the whole family. Familiar?
A very early hand painted glass slide with a lever to jiggle the image.
A hand painted glass slide with a second sliding component which animates the figure. Opague black paint alternatively masks the unwanted potion of the slide.
The first public performance to a large audience of moving animated projected images at Reynaud's 'Theatre Optique' in Paris 1892. A practical motion picture recording and projection device arived a few years later making Reynaud's hand made picture bands too uneconomical to produce. His Theatre
Magic Lanterns
Such shows as Charles Reynaud's 'Theatre Optique' draw upon the earlier 17th century invention of the magic lantern. Presentations to a large gathering became an artform and fascinated audiences of the day with illusions of light and movement. The magic lantern or Laterna Magica was the ancestor of the modern slide projector. It was first described in Ars Magna Lucis et
Umbrae, by Athanasius Kircher in 1671. He may have been describing an already existing device rather than announcing a new invention. With an oil lamp and a lens, images painted on glass plates could be projected on to a suitable screen; the ancestor of the modern slide projector.
A more modern magic lantern featuring twin lenses in order to dissolve two images together to create a magical animated transition - a spring scene into a winter scene, for example.

By the 19th century, there was a thriving trade of itinerant projectionists, who would travel the country with their magic lanterns, and a large number of slides, putting on shows in towns and villages. Some of the slides came with special effects, by means of extra sections that could slide or rotate across the main plate.
One of the most famous of these, very popular with children, was the 'rat-swallower', where a series of rats would be seen leaping into a sleeping man's mouth.
Such elaborate hand-coloured glass slides had articulated levers which allowed parts of one image to be moved against another or with a twin lens projector, be dissolved together.
Read on....
"Hey!" says dino...
"Don't they know my great, great, great grandpa invented the
Dinosauraphenatrope a million years ago"
Sources and Other References: http://web.archive.org/web/20060828133910/http://www.ex.a
c.uk/bill.douglas/Schools/animation/animation3.htm
http://asef.on2web.com/subSite/seaimages/2Dornot2Dthatsth equestion.htm
http://web.inter.nl.net/users/anima/optical/zoopraxi/index.ht
m

Optical Toys http://web.inter.nl.net/users/anima/optical/index.htm
Pre-cinema http://web.archive.org/web/20060828133910/http://web.inter
.nl.net/users/anima/pre-cinema/index.htm
Modern Zoetropes modern_zoetropes.htm
l
Chronophotography http://web.inter.nl.net/users/anima/chronoph/index.htm
http://web.archive.org/web/20060828133910/http://www.film
site.org/milestonespre1900s.html
http://web.archive.org/web/20060828133910/http://courses.n
cssm.edu/gallery/collections/toys/opticaltoys.htm
http://web.archive.org/web/20060828133910/http://courses.n
cssm.edu/gallery/collections/toys/html/exhibit10.htm
http://www.public.iastate.edu/~rllew/chrn1880.html
GIF animations for the web - the new Zoetrope