experimental animation definition

• Film Theory

What is Experimental Film — History, Examples & Movements

W hat is an experimental film? This elusive and niche genre can be difficult to define, and there are many common misconceptions about experimental filmmaking, but we’ll be sorting through the fact and the fiction to provide a comprehensive overview of what it means for a film to be “experimental”. We’ll get started with a definition, then dig deeper into experimental filmmaking as a genre, and finally close things out by taking a look at some notable examples.

Avant garde film definition

First, let’s define experimental film.

There are many film terms and phrases that could use simple definitions, and we’ve compiled them all in our ultimate guide to filmmaking terminology . You can also look up definitions for every genre of film in our ultimate guide to movie genres .

EXPERIMENTAL FILM DEFINITION

What is an experimental film.

An experimental film is a project bucks the trends of conventional cinema and pushes the medium of film in unexplored ways. The spectrum of experimental films is extremely broad; this genre encompasses a great many types of projects of varying lengths, styles, and goals.

There are experimental feature films, though more experimental projects have shorter runtimes. This is due in part to many experimental films being made for low budgets and/or the fact that the majority of experimental films are never intended for mainstream appeal or traditional distribution.

AVANT GARDE FILM CHARACTERISTICS

• Can be any length
• Niche and often artsy
• Pushes boundaries and tries new things

Experimental filmmakers

Digging deeper into experimental film.

Let’s dig a little deeper into what it means for a project to be classified as an experimental film. There is a modicum of debate over what exactly constitutes an experimental film, and some projects blur the line between traditional cinema and experimental filmmaking by including elements of each. Experimentation can be found in the editing, in the filming, in the subject matter, or in the manipulation of the camera and celluloid’s chemical and mechanical processes.

A beginner’s guide to experimental cinema

There are many misconceptions about what experimental filmmaking is, so let’s dispel a couple. One common belief is that experimental films have no story. While some experimental films certainly lack anything that could be considered a traditional narrative, that does not hold true for all experimental films.

Another commonly held notion is that experimental films are weird for the sake of being weird or that they are simply filmed nonsense. This is quite a reductive stance to take on the entire genre, but it is an opinion shared by many. The audience for experimental films can be extremely niche, and experimental filmmakers are aware of this. They are not made for everyone.

Surreal = experimental is another common misconception. Containing an element of surrealism does not automatically make a project experimental in nature. However, there is an intrinsic linkage between surrealism and experimental cinema, so the misconception is understandable. Let’s clarify this point with an example.

Sexy Beast  •  dream sequence

This dream sequence from the gangster flick Sexy Beast is undoubtedly surreal yet there is nothing experimental at play. The surrealism is conjured through traditional filmmaking means only. So, while surrealism and experimental cinema often go hand-in-hand, surrealism alone is not enough to constitute a film being labeled as experimental; the filmmaking methods and the pushing or warping of boundaries play important roles as well.

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The history of experimental cinema

Experimental filmmaking over the years.

Since the first camera was invented , artists have been experimenting with the tool. At the dawn of cinema, everything was an experiment. It was only through the intervention of time that certain techniques and methods became standard.

While many of the techniques used in Voyage dans la Lune seem antiquated by modern filmmaking standards, they were absolutely boundary shattering way back in 1902. Radical experimentation was necessary to pull off so many things that had never before been seen or created in the medium of film.

A Trip to the Moon

As cinematic techniques improved and became seen as standards, there were still filmmakers willing to experiment and push the envelope. 1929’s Un Chien Andalou was an early masterpiece of both surrealism and experimental filmmaking. Many of the techniques used in Un Chien Andalou were experimental at the time but have since been integrated into more standard filmmaking techniques as the decades have passed. Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel were two master surrealists and played an important role in the common linkage between surrealism and experimentation through their boundary pushing methods.

Un Chien Andalou

By the 1940s, surrealism and experimental filmmaking were further linked through the work of Maya Deren. Over time, she has proven to be one of the most influential experimental filmmakers of all time. She created a number of experimental short films, the first of which, Meshes of the Afternoon , is often credited as a turning point for experimental and avant garde cinema. The short remains a highlight of the genre more than 70 years after it was first released.

If you are interested in making your own short films, check out our how to make a short film guide first.

Meshes of the Afternoon  •  Maya Deren

Andy Warhol is a name well known in the pop art world, but he made numerous contributions to the experimental film world as well. Warhol made nearly 150 experimental short films throughout his lifetime, and a number of them made throughout the 1960s were considered important contributions to the form. Below is a compilation of six of Warhol’s shorts made between 1964 and 1966.

Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests

David Lynch is perhaps the most well-known filmmaker to consistently experiment in his films. He earned a spot on our list of the best directors of all time . Some Lynch projects explore a blend between experimental cinema and traditional filmmaking, while other Lynch projects comfortably fall into the “wholly experimental” category. Since his debut feature in 1977 with Eraserhead , Lynch has continued to employ experimental techniques in his feature films to this day. A significant degree of Eraserhead’s experimentation can be found in the atmospheric sound design . Listen closely to the trailer below.

Eraserhead  •  trailer

Now that we’ve explored a brief history of experimental filmmaking, let’s see if we can sort experimental films into a few distinct categories.

Experimental film examples

Types of experimental films.

Though experimental films in general can be a bit difficult to categorize as they defy convention by their very nature, there are a few common types we can examine from a bird’s eye view . The first type is: experimental films that challenge the form of filmmaking . This includes projects that defy the expectation of what a film is and manipulate the creation process, like Stan Brakhage’s Dog Star Man .

Dog Star Man  •  complete

This piece of experimental filmmaking was originally produced as four shorts before being compiled as a singular project. Dog Star Man is often hailed as an experimental masterpiece and was made through various manipulations to the film stock, experimenting with different exposure types, and radical editing techniques.

Another film that lands in the “challenges the form” category is Derek Jarman’s Blue . This one-hour-19-minute experimental film features just a single, unchanging visual for the entire duration: a solid blue screen. An intricately orchestrated audio track underscores the static visual, and the two combine to form a highly emotional experience.

Blue  •  Derek Jarman

Our next type of experimental film is the experimental documentary . Check out our list of the best documentaries to set a baseline for traditional documentary filmmaking before we jump into the experimental side of the genre. This experimental category encompasses projects like the nearly century old Soviet-produced Man With a Movie Camera . The full documentary is available to watch below.

Man With a Movie Camera

Another experimental documentary found in this category comes from none other than Orson Welles with For for Fake . This documentary, essay-film hybrid blurs the lines between fact and fiction in a fascinating way.

F for Fake Video Essay

Experimental Animation is a tried and true category of experimental filmmaking with many worthwhile and envelope pushing entries. Again, you can set a baseline for the non-experimental side of this genre by checking out our list of the best animated films ever made . As for the experimental side of the medium, first, we can return to David Lynch for his contribution to the category.

Six Men Getting Sick

The above short film, Six Men Getting Sick , was David Lynch’s very first foray into filmmaking. He began his journey into the arts as a painter, and you can see him bridging the gap with this painted filmmaking experiment.

For further examples of experimental animation, we can look to the Quay Brothers. Their shorts utilize a dreamy blend of stop-motion animation and puppetry. A number of their shorts are in the criterion collection; here is a highlight reel for four of their shorts.

Criterion teaser for the Quay Brothers

And for one last example of experimental animation found in a recent film, we can look to 2018’s German-Chilean production La Casa Lobo . Sculpture, stop-motion, traditional animation, and other artistic techniques were blended together in jaw dropping fashion that utilized life-size sets and dizzying camerawork. This experimental production pushes the boundaries of animation and accomplishes things never before seen in the medium. It gives the absolute best stop-motion films a run for their money.

The Wolf House  •  trailer

Experimental filmmaking remains alive and well in the modern filmmaking age. As long as there are boundaries left to push, filmmakers will continue to experiment.

What Was Dogme 95?

If you’re interested in experimental filmmaking, the Dogme 95 cinematic vow of chastity makes a fascinating case study into a radical filmmaking experiment. Learn about the movement, why and how it was created, the films that comprise it, and more, up next.

Up Next: What was Dogme 95? →

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How to Use the Power of Experimental Animation?

• Sep 3, 2019

If you try to google the definition of experimental animation you will probably run to numerous sites where experimental animation is represented mostly through works, and not in so many words. But what is so baffling about this type of animation that makes it difficult to define? What is experimental animation?

Experimental animation defined

Most attempts at defining experimental animation start with the revisits of the general definition of animation. However, a rapid succession of sequential images that create the illusion of movement – the usual definition of animation – can hardly explain what experimental animation is.

If you want to understand it, you need to look beyond the usual technical explanation - after all, we talk here about a type of animation - and detect what makes it unique from other sequential images combined together.

In contrast to mainstream animation, experimental animation challenges our perception and emotions. It often lacks a clear narrative structure - you often cannot anticipate what will happen next. It routinely breaks down the basic principles of audio and video comprehension so you’ll have a difficulty to describe what you are seeing or hearing. It constantly challenges you to look and hear with utmost attention, so that you can grasp the visual richness it offers you in full.

It is made of images showed in succession, but those images do not necessarily create a comprehensive story. Oftentimes they create a completely new world removed from anything we saw before and know to exist. In the same way as an experiment in science pushes the limits of our knowledge, experimental animation goes after our patterns of visual comprehension and literacy.

The story about experimental animation

Early animation experimentalists

With modern times came also the experiments in various creative fields such as dance, theatre, music, and cinema. Artists of the avant-garde movements questioned the established norms and played with the modes of expression in a way that made them notorious at the time, but also became revered by the later generations.

First experiments in animation were made by painters such as Viking Eggeling , Léopold Survage , and Walter Ruttmann. Survage famously proclaimed that he wants to animate his paintings and to create a new visual art of “colored rhythm and rhythmic color”. The first completed experimental animation was made by Ruttmann in 1921 on a 35mm film for  Lichtspiel Opus I film, while another notable early experiment is  Diagonal Symphony  by Viking Eggeling from 1924 - a short experimental animation about time intervals in the film medium.

Viking Eggeling – Diagonal Symphony

Among the institutions that helped the development of experimental animation is the California Institute of the Arts and its Founding Director Jules Engel. Engel worked for Disney before becoming the leading figure of the Institute and the mentor of many students who would go on and explore the world of experimental animation.

Experimental animation today: From big studios to independent practice

Last year Pixar announced that it will start an experimental department that will focus on the creation of short animations in order to “explore new creative visions and increase studio opportunities.” It seems that experimental animation is on the rise, as even the big studios are reaching into the world of experimentals to help them generate new ideas.

In the last 15 years, technology and education have advanced so much that today you can create your own animation without the assistance of big studios. This also means that animated works are now sillier, stranger, or scarier than ever before, creating a wonderful theatre of styles, narratives, and astounding visuals.

Being part of the experimental fine art practice, experimental animation has often been neglected or considered only in relation to cinema studies. As animations are often being seen as cartoons, it is even harder for its experimental part to be seen as outside of the experimental film canon. Perhaps in the future a more elaborate research of experimental animation will be conducted, that will include the disciplines of art, philosophy, and cinema. This would facilitate also its more accurate definition.

Until that happens, we can enjoy the best pieces of experimental animation such as the amazing  Swap Meet  created as a collaborative project of 14 animators.

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Featured image: Photo by  John Adams  on  Unsplash .

External links:

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/pixar-original-film-experimental-animated-shorts-department-a7763581.html#gallery

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Understanding the Indian Animation Scenario. Promoting Indian Animators.

Experimental animation.

Experimental Animation is the name given to assorted methods of painstakingly animating frame-by-frame to manipulate the resulting images. There are no set rules and the artist can take liberties with the medium, let his imagination run wild and create poetry on film by drawing directly on film or using anything from sand to paint to pins!

Drawn on Film Animation A technique where footage is produced by creating the images directly on film stock, for example by Norman McLaren and Len Lye.

Sand Animation Sand is moved around on a backlighted or frontlighted piece of glass to create each frame for an animated film. This creates an interesting effect when animated because of the light contrast.

Paint on Glass Animation A technique for making animated films by manipulating slow drying oil paints on sheets of glass.

Pinscreen animation This technique makes use of a screen filled with movable pins, which can be moved in or out by pressing an object onto the screen. The screen is lit from the side so that the pins cast shadows. The technique has been used to create animated films with a range of textural effects difficult to achieve with traditional cel animation.

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Experimental animation

arguably the most intellectually captivating and challenging art piece of the 20th century. , , (1913), where he planned them in motion by using film animation techniques. (1924) (1923) (1972) Walter Ruttmann displayed his hand-coloured abstract film ‘ (1921)’ in Germany, which was described by Bernhard Diebold as “a new art, the vision-music of films”. (1938) (1935-1937) (1949) (1966) James Whitney (1946-57) Harry Smith (1952) Hy Hirsch

• DOI: 10.1386/ap3_00002_1
• Corpus ID: 241396171

Defining experimental animation: A follow-up

• P. Taberham
• Published in Animation Practice, process… 1 December 2019

One Citation

Distorsi sejarah dan persepsi visual: studi kasus animasi pocahontas, 10 references, craft as critique in experimental animation, the ‘quasi-artistic venture’: mtv idents and alternative animation culture, it is alive if you are, a universe of boundaries: pixilated performances in jan švankmajer’s food, introduction, experimental animation and motion graphics, emotion and affect, the world is a cartoon: stray notes on animation: animation at the end of cinema, related papers.

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It Is Alive if You Are: Defining Experimental Animation

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As uncompromising as it may be, learning to appreciate experimental animation yields a world of provocative, visceral and enriching experiences. We may ask, what does one need to know when first venturing into this style of ani- mation? What are the first principles one should understand? This chapter outlines some of the underlying assumptions that can serve as a springboard when stepping into this wider aesthetic domain.

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This chapter outlines the underlying assumptions that can serve as a springboard when stepping into the wider aesthetic domain. Experimental animation need not be understood as a ‘genre’ with its own set of iconographies, emotional effects or recurring themes like westerns, horrors or romantic comedies. There are two seminal books from the field of animation studies which offer their own definitions of experimental animation: Paul Wells’ Understanding Animation, and Maureen Furniss’ Art in Motion: Animation Aesthetics. Like conventional narratives, independent animations normally feature discernible characters and involve a chain of events occurring in cause and effect relationship. In experimental animation, a film might defy straightforward description and not necessarily feature an explicit take-away moral or message. In commercial animations the function of the surface detail is always subordinated to the story that it serves, and won’t play as big a part of the experience once it has been integrated into the larger, more ‘meaningful’ form of an over-arching story.

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Experimental Cinema

News and resources on experimental films, experimental animation: origins of a new art, rating: .

From the early abstract animation films created at the start of this century to the latest in technologically oriented films, here is a comprehensive anthology of cinematic animation. It brings together over 50 interviews and first-person accounts that describe the work of 38 innovative artist-filmmakers. Such pioneers as Alexander Alexeieff and Claire Parker, Hans Richter, Vicking Eggerling, and Oskkar Fishinger are alongside the recent avant-garde of Robert Breer, Harry Smith, Stan VanDer Beek, Peter Foldes, and Ed Emschweiller. With nearly 300 illustrations, a filmography, a glossary of technical terms, and a list of distributors, this is the first important sourcebook for an emerging art.

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1st Edition

Experimental Animation From Analogue to Digital

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Experimental Animation: From Analogue to Digital , focuses on both experimental animation’s deep roots in the twentieth century, and its current position in the twenty-first century media landscape. Each chapter incorporates a variety of theoretical lenses, including historical, materialist, phenomenological and scientific perspectives. Acknowledging that process is a fundamental operation underlining experimental practice, the book includes not only chapters by international academics, but also interviews with well-known experimental animation practitioners such as William Kentridge, Jodie Mack, Larry Cuba, Martha Colburn and Max Hattler. These interviews document both their creative process and thoughts about experimental animation’s ontology to give readers insight into contemporary practice. Global in its scope, the book features and discusses lesser known practitioners and unique case studies, offering both undergraduate and graduate students a collection of valuable contributions to film and animation studies.

Table of Contents

Miriam Harris is an experimental animator, scholar and Senior Lecturer at the Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand. She completed postgraduate study in Digital Animation and Visual Effects at Sheridan College, Toronto, and her experimental animated films have won awards at international film and animation festivals. Her essays have been published in the books Animated Worlds (2007), The Jewish Graphic Novel: Critical Approaches (2008) and 24 Czech and Polish Animators (2011). She is on the editorial board of the animation journal Animation Practice, Process, & Production , edited by Paul Wells. Lilly Husbands is a Lecturer in Animation and Visual Culture at Middlesex University, United Kingdom. Her research is broadly concerned with the legacy and evolution of experimental animation in the context of contemporary multimedia practice. She has published numerous book chapters and articles on experimental animation in journals such as Moving Image Review & Art Journal (MIRAJ) , Frames Cinema Journal and Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media . She is an associate editor of Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal . Paul Taberham is a lecturer and scholar who has published on topics such as film cognition, evolutionary theories of art, avant-garde film and animation, film sound and aesthetics. He is the co-editor of Cognitive Media Theory (2014) and author of Lessons in Perception: The Avant-Garde Filmmaker as Practical Psychologist (2018). In addition, he has spoken internationally at conferences and published articles for several edited collections and journals including Projections: The Journal for Movies and Mind and Animation Journal . He is a fellow of The Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image.

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Visualizing Art History: Experimental Animation and Its Mentor, Jules Engel

by Janeann Dill | Mar 19, 2012

A dictionary begins when it no longer gives the meaning of words, but their tasks. — Georges Bataille

It is most often the case when I refer to my work as experimental animation that I am met with the question, what is experimental animation? I am instantly reminded of a story about Louis Armstrong in conversation with Johnny Carson who asked Armstrong, “What is jazz?” Louis Armstrong enthusiastically responded, “Well if you don’t know what it is, I sure as hell can’t tell you!”

In some ways, Louis Armstrong’s response might be said to be universal for questions having to do with art, in that any attempt to offer definition tends to further confuse, bind, constrict and/or be irrelevant, rather than to clarify meaning. As a scholar and as an artist, I am most interested in the unanswerable. As I understand it, to ask the unanswerable is the beginning of an event … if you will, an event of language, timing and gesture, experimentation and conceptualizing. The more important consideration in a “what is ____?” question is not the answer, but the asking.. How is it we know so little about the art form?

The artist is a creative intellectual, not an inspired idiot. — Brown Report, Harvard University, 1956

With an historical critical trajectory in mind, I would like to briefly consider the advent of Modernist artists who widely experimented with new concepts of time and movement in painting, dance, music, and theater, and the resulting art history generated across those disciplines. Seeking to make visible an interior life held focus, conceptually speaking, in lieu of illustrating an exterior “reality.” As if in concert, art movements in France, Germany, Russia, and Italy gave value to a critical and literary examination of rhythmic processes and multiple perspectives of forms in art, not only as spatial relationships on a flat painting surface, but temporally.

Framing Experimental Animation inside Modernism’s pursuit of a time-based visual art, experiments in animation by the painters, Léopold Survage (France, 1914), Walter Ruttmann (Germany, 1921) and Viking Eggeling (Germany,1924) were realized, but short lived, to be eclipsed by an absence of acknowledgment or by death. Léopold Survage did not live to see his paintings on glass plates filmed (the Museum of Modern Art in New York has a series of his ink washes that were studies for animations ) but spoke elegantly of his conscious commitment to experiment with animation:

“I will animate my painting, I will give it movement, I will introduce rhythm into the concrete action of my abstract painting, born of my interior life; my instrument will be the cinematographic film, this true symbol of accumulated movement. It will execute the ‘scores’ of my visions, corresponding to my state of mind in its successive phases. I am creating a new visual art in time, that of colored rhythm and of rhythmic color.” (Léopold Survage)

In 1921, Walter Ruttmann exhibited the first completed experimental animation, a hand-tinted 35mm film with a live performance of a synchronous musical score composed especially for the film, “Lichtspiel Opus I.” Ruttmann was also a musician and performed with his film in the live quartet.

I give credit to our first critical theorist in experimental animation, Viking Eggeling. His experimental animation, Diagonal Symphony , was completed in 1924 but when he became ill almost immediately after its release and died, this extensive research in visual language lay dormant until the late 20 th century. (Ruttmann’s “Opus I”. and Eggeling’s “Diagonal Symphony” may be found on YouTube.com, but please be aware that contemporary composers have appropriated the visuals to accompany new soundtracks.)

Experimental Animation is an important and neglected strand of experimental fine art practice. Examined in relation to art history as a whole and cinema history in particular, “all” animation has largely been considered ‘cartoon.’ When all animation is framed within cinema studies, it is largely assumed to be a subcategory of live-action, just as experimental animation is largely assumed to be a form of frame-at-a-time experimental film. A combined examination of the histories of art, cinema, and philosophy has yet to be undertaken. An arts criticism that accommodated these disciplines would be potent, precisely because it is terrain that has been overlooked. Historically deemed untenable and alien to a canon of measure and practice of fine art, experimental animation was assumed to be mode of experimental film with its accompanying standard of measure, an ill fit.

“Visualizing Art History: Experimental Animation and Its Mentor, Jules Engel” is a documentary feature (in-progress) that links this critical research to a contemporary art practice of experimental animation. An exemplary focus for any experimental art form lies in the power of an artist-mentor-educator to transform its creative practice. Jules Engel (1909-2003), who began his mainstream career as an animator for Disney’s Fantasia , was that exemplar for over three generations of students at Cal Arts.

California Institute of the Arts was the first higher educational institution in America to create an academic track for the study of animation as an art form. In the early 1970’s, Cal Arts appointed Engel the Founding Director/Chair of the Animation Department and was named Institute Fellow prior to his death in 2003. Experimental animation in America grew up in California in the belly of the beast of Hollywood and extends its reach into New England through the generations of students that Jules Engel successfully mentored in fine art, film industry, and independent film.

In closing, here is a small offering of an example of experimental animation (“Elegy for Jules”), a brief segment featuring me talking about the meaninig of “abstract” in my art, and an excerpt from my documentary in progress about the work of Jules Engel:

ELEGY FOR JULES_A Janeann Dill Film from Janeann Dill: IIACI on Vimeo .

7-minute short form documentary on Engel, “Jules Engel: An Artist For All Seasons,” on the IIACI CHANNEL

Short piece featuring me in my studio with drawings at the IIACI CHANNEL

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Experimental Animation

CFP “EXPERIMENTAL ANIMATION”

February 2015 Theme ( deadline Friday 23 rd January )

Abstract or non-figurative animation was the focus of much attention in the 1980s when Russett and Starr published their key text on the form and up and coming animators of the time (1988). The book formed the basis of a useful discussion, however it remains one of the few books on the subject and is consequently quite dated. Perhaps due to changing distribution and festival schedules, changing audience demands, or the dominance of the narrative driven, child centric, mainstream figurative work, there is a distinct lack of discussion of experimental work in animation studies generally.

This month we invite posts, which seek to address some of these gaps and can include, but are not limited to:

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Craft as Critique in Experimental Animation

• First Online: 04 April 2019

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• Lilly Husbands 5  

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As a moving image art form, experimental animation blurs the boundaries between art and craft, intangibility and materiality, conceptualism and sensuousness in wide-ranging and thought-provoking ways. This chapter considers experimental animation alongside the concerns of craft as a physical, artistic and critical practice. It focuses in particular on issues of (im)materiality, the act of making and the significance of skill—the last of these especially as it relates to what craft theorists call “sloppy craft” (Wilson 2015, xxiv), or the purposeful application of imperfect technique as a subversive practice and form of social critique. Drawing from art history and craft theory, the chapter reveals some of the complex ways that craft undergirds and shapes our understanding of experimental animation as an art form.

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Husbands, L. (2019). Craft as Critique in Experimental Animation. In: Ruddell, C., Ward, P. (eds) The Crafty Animator. Palgrave Animation. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13943-8_3

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