{"id":297825,"date":"2010-02-09T12:33:32","date_gmt":"2010-02-09T17:33:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/?p=37433"},"modified":"2010-02-09T12:33:32","modified_gmt":"2010-02-09T17:33:32","slug":"%e2%80%98frame-by-frame%e2%80%99","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/297825","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Frame by Frame\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you think Harvard is an animated place, you don\u2019t know the half of it.<\/p>\n

Though it is not widely known, the University famous for literature, languages, and medicine also helped to pioneer the art of making still images appear to move.<\/p>\n

Sand animation got its start at Harvard (though artists in Switzerland were on the same sand-shifting track). And stop-motion clay animation \u2014 an art that has reached a zany zenith with the \u201cWallace and Gromit\u201d films \u2014 had part of its start in Cambridge.<\/p>\n

Manipulating sand and clay to simulate motion were among the fruits of an animation program begun at the Carpenter Center<\/a> in 1963. That was the year when Robert Gardner<\/a>, a documentary filmmaker and longtime director of Harvard\u2019s Film Study Center<\/a>, hired animators John and Faith Hubley to teach.<\/p>\n

\u201cI get bored of people saying: \u2018I didn\u2019t know there was animation at Harvard,\u2019\u201d said exhibit organizer Ruth Lingford. \u201cAnd actually there\u2019s this fantastic history.\u201c<\/p>\n

Lingford, professor of the practice of animation in the Visual and Environmental Studies<\/a> (VES) program, organized \u201cFrame by Frame: Animated at Harvard<\/a>.\u201d The show of new and old work is in the Carpenter Center\u2019s Sert Gallery through Sunday (Feb. 14).<\/p>\n

The show runs on seven screens and in two looping wall projections. It includes early work by sand animator Caroline Leaf\u00a0 \u201968 (the magical \u201cSand, or Peter and the Wolf\u201d from 1969) and Eli Noyes \u201964 (whose \u201cClay, or the Origin of Species\u201d drew an Oscar nomination for best animated short).<\/p>\n

Another legacy Harvard film on view, Frank Mouris\u2019 nine-minute \u201cFrank Film,\u201d an autobiography in frenetic collage animation, won a 1974 Oscar for best short subject.<\/p>\n

Viewers get the long and short of animation, from the 18-second \u201cOrgasm Loop\u201d by Terah Maher, M.Arch \u201906, to the epic (in animation terms) \u201cAsparagus\u201d by Suzan Pitt, a lavish 1979 production now considered a feminist classic. In the exhibit notes, Pitt wrote that she made a film that \u201cflowed slowly forward like a daydream.\u201d<\/p>\n

But even daydreams take time to create on screen. Animators old and new admit to the art\u2019s time intensity, saying it is \u201cinsanely labor intensive,\u201d as Lingford put it.<\/p>\n

For one scene in \u201cAsparagus,\u201d in which a woman watches a garden pass by as if it were a movie, Pitt recalled a 48-hour shoot at the Carpenter Center, \u201cwhere I never slept or left the camera room.\u201d<\/p>\n

Animation\u2019s time sink cost the 1997 movie \u201cTitanic\u201d a summer release \u2014 six extra months because of production bottlenecks. In those days, a single frame required a rendering time of 72 hours. (For today\u2019s \u201cAvatar,\u201d whose credits include almost 1,000 animators, rendering time is now down to 24 hours per frame.)<\/p>\n

Maher, an animation teaching assistant at VES who designed the \u201cFrame by Frame\u201d exhibit, said it took her six months to create her 18-second animation loop, though she was not working full time on it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not just cartoons,\u201d said Maher, who fell in love with the art form while studying architecture. \u201cAnimation is much more.\u201d<\/p>\n

For one thing, it is an art form that takes advantage of optical illusion. Still objects that vary slightly, when separated by a slight interval of darkness, appear to move.<\/p>\n

In her exhibit notes, Lingford called animation \u201cfreedom from restraints of the possible.\u201d And Leaf, visiting the exhibit at a Feb. 4 reception, recalled that at Harvard in the 1960s animation was taught like \u201canother creative art, like poetry or writing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Charlestown animation designer and teacher Pell Osborn, founder of LineStorm.com, was a special student at the Carpenter Center in 1974-75, years that shifted his career path from French literature and playwriting to creating motion with still objects, drawings, or paintings.<\/p>\n

He chatted with Leaf at the reception. Both recalled how the Carpenter Center shimmered with creative energy. \u201cThe animation felt free,\u201d said Leaf, now a London-based animation artist trying to break into oil painting. \u201cNobody was checking up on that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Working at the 16mm Moviola editing machine was absorbing, Osborn said, but \u201cyou just felt this swirl of energy behind you,\u201d as other animators worked with sand, puppets, and clay.<\/p>\n

Harvard\u2019s old Moviola editing machine is on display at the exhibit. It\u2019s a steel contraption the size of a Franklin stove with switches, buttons, pedals, and \u201cexciter lamps\u201d that evoke Jules Verne more than James Cameron. There are puppets too \u2014 doll-size models of plaster gauze and armature wire \u2014 from a work in progress called \u201cShapeshifter\u201d by Lillian Fang \u201910.<\/p>\n

Animation is even more than the liberation of art. It\u2019s an expressive territory open to every academic path, said Lingford. \u201cAnimation includes acting, sound, music, painting, poetry, writing, physics, metaphysics \u2014 everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

She is co-teaching a course this semester on animation for the sciences, along with two Harvard cell biologists. A similar course is under way at Harvard Medical School.<\/p>\n

\u201cHarvard is the perfect place for animation,\u201d said Lingford, whose work includes the eerie and erotic \u201cPleasures of War\u201d from 1998. \u201cAnimation is such a meeting point of different disciplines.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps two or three VES students a year produce animation projects for their senior theses, she said. But many more use the art to supplement their scholarship, including students in biology and chemistry.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s quite a young art,\u201d said Lingford of animation. \u201cWe\u2019ve only scratched the surface of possibilities.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"An<\/p>\n
\n

An eye for creativity<\/p>\n

\u201cFrame by Frame: Animated at Harvard\u201d will be on display at the Carpenter Center\u2019s Sert Gallery through Feb. 14. In this particular series, Tiffanie Hsu ’09 received a Hoopes Prize for her work.\n<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Cutting<\/p>\n
\n

Cutting edge<\/p>\n

Hsu’s piece is part of the show, which runs on seven screens and in two looping wall projections. <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"What<\/p>\n
\n

What you see<\/p>\n

Animation is an art form that takes advantage of optical illusion.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"By<\/p>\n
\n

By design<\/p>\n

Animators old and new admit to the art\u2019s time intensity, saying it is \u201cinsanely labor intensive.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Up<\/p>\n
\n

Up and coming<\/p>\n

Animation\u2019s time sink cost the 1997 movie \u201cTitanic\u201d a summer release \u2014 six extra months because of production bottlenecks. In those days, a single frame required a rendering time of 72 hours. <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Getting<\/p>\n
\n

Getting the point<\/p>\n

For today\u2019s \u201cAvatar,\u201d whose credits include almost 1,000 animators, rendering time is now down to 24 hours per frame. <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Taking<\/p>\n
\n

Taking flight<\/p>\n

Perhaps two or three VES students a year produce animation projects for their senior theses. But many more use the art to supplement their scholarship.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Light<\/p>\n
\n

Light touch<\/p>\n

Though it is not widely known, Harvard helped to pioneer the art of making still images appear to move.\n<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/p><\/div>\n

\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

Photo slideshow:<\/span> Animation at work<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n

Jon Chase\/Harvard Staff Photographer<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you think Harvard is an animated place, you don\u2019t know the half of it. Though it is not widely known, the University famous for literature, languages, and medicine also helped to pioneer the art of making still images appear to move. Sand animation got its start at Harvard (though artists in Switzerland were on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4175,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-297825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4175"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297825"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297825\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}