Overview

How can we describe movements in animated films? In Figure and Force in Animation Aesthetics, Ryan Pierson introduces a powerful new method for the study of animation. By looking for figures--arrangements that seem to intuitively hold together--and forces--underlying units of attraction, repulsion, and direction--Pierson reveals startling new possibilities for animation criticism, history, and theory. Drawing on concepts from Gestalt psychology, Pierson offers a wide-ranging comparative study of four animation techniques--soft-edged forms, walk cycles, camera movement, and rotoscoping--as they appear in commercial, artisanal, and avant-garde works. In the process, through close readings of little-analyzed films, Pierson demonstrates that figures and forces make fertile resources for theoretical speculation, unearthing affinities between animation practice and such topics as the philosophy of mathematics, scientific and political revolution, and love. Beginning and ending with the imperative to look closely, Figure and Force in Animation Aesthetics is a performance in seeing the world of motion anew.

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9780190949761

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Figure and Force in Animation Aesthetics is a major intervention in the history of modernism. In this beautiful book, Pierson so carefully, so lovingly tracks the formal and philosophical seriousness of abstract animatorsMary Beams, Robert Breer, Norman McLaren, to name only a fewwhose work has caused major categorical discomfort for scholars of popular narrative-based forms of animation, on the one hand, and for the gatekeepers of the modernist canon, on the other. Moreover, Pierson has opened up a whole new vocabulary for thinking about form in the realm of philosophical aesthetics. His conceptualizations of force, movement, figure, re-centering, illustrative and demonstrative metamorphosis alone will be with us, I predict, for a very long time. * Brian Price, Professor of Visual Studies, University of Toronto * Figure and Force in Animation Aesthetics constitutes a tour de force in animation studies. Rejecting conventional forms, Pierson turns to figure and force to overturn everything we thought we perceived in animation.Through careful analyses of animated films, Pierson shows how every distinct figure is a threshold, generated differentially through the force of the sensible,imperceptibly minute perceptions. But what makes this book so compelling and challenging is that Pierson does not stop there. Figure and force provide a springboard for asking how aesthetics orients questions of life and living exposure, complexity, alienation, love. * Thomas Lamarre, Duke University * Figure and Force in Animation Aesthetics is a major intervention in the history of modernism. In this beautiful book, Pierson so carefully, so lovingly tracks the formal and philosophical seriousness of abstract animatorsMary Beams, Robert Breer, Norman McLaren, to name only a fewwhose work has caused major categorical discomfort for scholars of popular narrative-based forms of animation, on the one hand, and for the gatekeepers of the modernist canon, on the other. Moreover, Pierson has opened up a whole new vocabulary for thinking about form in the realm of philosophical aesthetics. His conceptualizations of force, movement, figure, re-centering, illustrative and demonstrative metamorphosis alone will be with us, I predict, for a very long time. * Brian Price, Professor of Visual Studies, University of Toronto *

Figure and Force in Animation Aesthetics is a major intervention in the history of modernism. In this beautiful book, Pierson so carefully, so lovingly tracks the formal and philosophical seriousness of abstract animatorsMary Beams, Robert Breer, Norman McLaren, to name only a fewwhose work has caused major categorical discomfort for scholars of popular narrative-based forms of animation, on the one hand, and for the gatekeepers of the modernist canon, on the other. Moreover, Pierson has opened up a whole new vocabulary for thinking about form in the realm of philosophical aesthetics. His conceptualizations of force, movement, figure, re-centering, illustrative and demonstrative metamorphosis alone will be with us, I predict, for a very long time. * Brian Price, Professor of Visual Studies, University of Toronto * Figure and Force in Animation Aesthetics constitutes a tour de force in animation studies. Rejecting conventional forms, Pierson turns to figure and force to overturn everything we thought we perceived in animation.Through careful analyses of animated films, Pierson shows how every distinct figure is a threshold, generated differentially through the force of the sensible, imperceptiblely minute perceptions. But what makes this book so compelling and challenging is that Pierson does not stop there. Figure and force provide a springboard for asking how aesthetics orients questions of life and living exposure, complexity, alienation, love. * Thomas Lamarre, Duke University * Figure and Force in Animation Aesthetics is a major intervention in the history of modernism. In this beautiful book, Pierson so carefully, so lovingly tracks the formal and philosophical seriousness of abstract animatorsMary Beams, Robert Breer, Norman McLaren, to name only a fewwhose work has caused major categorical discomfort for scholars of popular narrative-based forms of animation, on the one hand, and for the gatekeepers of the modernist canon, on the other. Moreover, Pierson has opened up a whole new vocabulary for thinking about form in the realm of philosophical aesthetics. His conceptualizations of force, movement, figure, re-centering, illustrative and demonstrative metamorphosis alone will be with us, I predict, for a very long time. * Brian Price, Professor of Visual Studies, University of Toronto *

Author Information

Ryan Pierson is Assistant Professor of Film at the University of Calgary.

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