Animation gives more
Animation enters our lives daily from films, graphic titles, commercials, videogames, to music videos, advertisements and even content on ATMs. The use of animation to unpick science and nature is an area that I really appreciate amongst its many uses.
Technology is advancing everyday and at this stage we aren’t just told information, information is played out and projected in front of us. Undiscovered facts and microscopic particles come to life in a previously impossible way allowing them to become part of our experiences on a more individual and personal level – almost giving us something to take away and keep as our own memory.
Because of technology, the quality of cameras , the possibilities of animation software employed by skilled animators, we now experience information rather than just read or watch it. An example of this is within nature programs such as Frozen Planet where the use of time-lapse animation allows the viewer to see every precise stage and development of a snowflake. This is something we would never have been able to see if not for its animated projection breaking down each stage of the snowflakes formation.
Watch the animation of a cell and TED talk from David Bolinsky here.
In his talk, David Bolinsky animates a cell that, without the visual aid of animation is something near impossible to depict in such detail, accuracy and visual imagination. The use of animation again captures something we would otherwise be unable to see. It represents the visual simulation of a cell in advanced depth, scale and dimension.
Animation is used in this educational way providing a fuller understanding of such topics as cells, particles, the human body, animals, habitats, and environments as though we are seeing the subject first hand, minus the camera lens and in real time. The information not only becomes three dimensional, contextualised and in some cases a lot more real, it becomes a whole new experience in itself.
Many creative people think in images and demonstrating and representing information through in-depth moving diagrams and animated sequences like this, is something I find a great luxury to be able to view. It opens up areas of incomprehensible information to a wider audience providing greater mass understanding in who we are, where we come from and how the world around us works. In this way, I‘m glad that animation makes information accessible.
Animation has many functions and is depended on in a variety of fields – commercial, creative, educational and all the bits in between. It demands a high skill set and is one of the only artforms with huge adaptability in terms of how and in what way it functions. Animation proved itself a long time ago and for these initial reasons I wonder why experimental artists animation is continuously questioned against other artforms and why there is such a lack of funding to artists flourishing in, and organisations supporting, this strangely neglected area within the art world.