[ t Animated ‘Worlds’ Edited by Suzanne Buchan © Associate Editors David Surman Paul WardBritish Library Cataloguing in Publication Data “Animated "Worlds Acatalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 0 86196 681 9 (Paperback) Published by John Libbey Publishing, Bax 26, Faseigh SO30 SYS, UK ‘nal Ubbey)@asianet coh: web ste: wie johilibbey com Orders: Book Representation & Distribution Led. info@bookseps com Diswibured in Nowh Ameriat by Indiana University Press, 6011 North Moston St Bloorington, IN #3405, USA. wwwiupress indiana eda Distibutedin Ausuclasisby Elsevier Australia, 0-52 Sinidmmore Sucet, Masviclills NSW 220, ssi. srw lever oom 38 ‘Distributed in Japan by United Pablishers Services Led, Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo 140-000, Japan. nfo@ape.cojp © 2006 Copyright Joba Libbey Publishing, All hte reserved Unauthorised daplieation contravenes applicable laws Primed in Malaysia by Viva Prindag Sdn. Bhd, 48000 Rewang, Selangor Darul Ehsan. 32-5 Higaci-shinagawa, Contents Chapter 1 Chapter? Chapter Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 (Chapter I Chapter 12 inrodseson Sis Bchn ‘The Joyous Recep: Feet ol ud te Romani gation ka Kevncy “The Anima Spectr Wachee Gay Brothers “Word Sime icon “he Sings ofthe Maine Rela ene Gesring var Oly eater Cie Lier tan Trade Tae and Len Ey Lik wih aca eCard Mem Han Literary Theory, Animation and she ‘Subjective Correlative" Defining the Nasrative World’ in Britlit Animation, Pad Wale “Animated Fathers: Representations of Masculinity in The Simpaons and King of he Fill Szonne Walliams- Reta Animated Interactions: Animation Aesthetics and the ‘World ofthe ‘Ineractive’ Documentary Paul Ward New Media Worlds Thomas Lamene Style, Consistency and Plausibility in the Fable Gameworld David Seema Final Funtasies: Computer Graphic Animation end the [Dis]Musion of Life Vivian Sobehack [An Unrecognised Treasure Chest: The Internet as an imation Archive Karin Wen ~ 8 13 BL 151 m 183ANIMATED WORLDS’ 135, Giles Deeaze, Foul (Minneapolis Universiy of Minnesota Press. 2000): 95-97. 36 Though the charcersof Tucker andthe Qj’ The Sandan ate not iene in the rei ‘yr, [salle i's automamo character Ovnpia cere Hoffman character whi sess obviously base 37. Qhoted in Giannlbero Beas, Guten: One Hunde Yer of Caos Annoy (London: John Lite. 1998) 23. 238, Routing Kraus, Tle Opi! Usoracn (Sted) (Cambridge, MA; The MIT Pest, 18 206.20, 39, Connor, See, The Shakes: Coions of Tremar’ Available en Inaputirww Bbkaeaklehvengskfshakes) Accessed? Octoer 2004 Literary Len: Trade Tattoo and Len Lye’s Link with the Literary i Avant-Garde firious disciplines that may inspire the independent animator working lavrithin the fine arts realm, Sculpture, dance, jazz, tribal rhythms, |Qeeanie and African art, and modernist painting all played 2 vial role in | cn Lye's interests and creative output are an embodiment of the multi~ sat certain literary innovations, such as the writings of James Joyce, have shaped narrative structures within contemporary digital ineractive media.! Fe. Similarly. Lye's close connection with avant-garde literature —as a writer, {G_. admirer of the work of James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, and Arthur Rimbaud, and a a close fiend of Laura Riding and Robere Graves ~ manifests itself -vithin bis animation, and is parciculaly evident an ins film Timde Tattoo = (1987, His joyful, off-beat personality, uniquely egg-shaped bald pare and the Be striking originality of his work quickly endeared him to a ively community aera: Thisesay explores te mulddiscplinary world of Len Ly's animated ima Tade Tee whch wat creme nom gjeceddonnnenry kc om the Gena Pot ie: Ui rat Ban and ee scl onesnaon and an cone: muse Te esay begs By fargronnding the permeable Woundais Heather Crow ie doctoral candidate in Performance Snudies a the Universit eeneeaavane-zatde ltcratare ane Ce vita ars nthe the and Sess otined ee eee tae edison ented POSSESSTONS. Ns [otc yy searerc hares Alec adgys esate inate er ‘Sinimaicd Bots n Mediaed Peyomance. Hex areas of research include cheories of agg [ ach a Laura Riding Robert Graves, Gertrude Stein, and James Joes upon, Len tye | daa ole Ne ntnpeany ene ei | ity, eng tae noc hace of yen ema robe et cee wi cany desc oar thse denen tneaton Tee Tae sod mehtectne She sso puppeteer, acon and teste esis zine te ey cst cries ee nsclaon id at. a iyANIMATED ‘WORLDS’ possibilities of Modernism. Lye's passage from Sydney to London liad beea paid by stoking the ship's furnaces, and che motifs of journeying, motion, and manual labour repeatedly reverberate ten years Later in his 1937 film Trade Tatoo. “Trade Tattoo is a multisiseiplinary explosion of ideas and approaches crea fiom rejected documentary takes from the General Post Office Film Unit and merged wih stencil paweras, direct animation and Cuban dance music. From chic perspective, tia vireoso mastery of colour film pining processes, but the most resounding innovations resi between text and images. Constantly Lye’s words and visuals, together w traced to an avant-garde interestin disciplinary permeability and a departure from realism. His text and images endow the film with a poetic cohesive ness, allowing for the emergence of rich symbolic allusions, that woul bya conservative approach to narrative. otherwise be stymi This essay explores the poetic structure of Trade Tatoo, and its relationship, ‘rth modemise poetry and printing of tie 19205 and 1930s, and ith Lye own writing. Music 1s another vital strand in Lye’s animated film, and cannot be ignored. Music, words, and picrures all contribute to Lye's) overriding concern with rhythm, movement, and an exhilarating bodily i energy, It is impossible to discuss his treatment of words and form without 4 considering their relationship so sound and movement, and this was ¢ concern shared by modernist writers. Text and image are interowined ia. Trade Tatoo in x manne that differs from Lye’s previous animations, and tis the implications of this dynamic coupling thae I wish to focus upon, In Lye’s earlier animated films, such a5 A Colour Box (1 (1935), and Reiubow Dance (1 | surprise reappearance at the end in the form of a commerci ment, While Lye integrates the te ). Kaleidoscope text introduces the Glen segments can still be perceived as a comical, incongruous addition. Lye seems to wink at us, laughingly acknowledging the forces that made the § film financially viable, with this leap into the prosaic. In Trade Taso image and texe cance, chase each other, and attain sublime level § forthe entire duration ofthe film. The rhythm is informed noc only by the butatso the movement of watual and imagistic passages, which may ared to the structure of Lye’s own poctry (Fig. 1) 4 nist poetry theorist Charles. Alte, in which he explores dhe work of poots such as Gertrude Stein and. 4 Ezra Pound, and their incorporation of the om stylistically with the preceding visuals and exhibits a textual plyfulness that echoes modernist concerns, these 1 so “ooking athe psyche be Trade Tatoo and Len Lye’s Link with the Literary Avant-Garde ip 1: Len Leet Work. [Couey of he Lex Lye Foundation, ‘Portaait of Picasso’, from a Cubist perspective, in which she wanslates into # liverature Cubism’s attention to multiple spatial planes? Through slight ‘shifts in the structure of sentences, Secin created multifaceted modes of (One who some were certainly follow as one who was completely charm- ing, One whom some were certainly following was one who was charming. One whorn some were followit whom some vere following vwazone who was completely charming, One tone who was ereainly completely charming? Such an approach was a radical departure from literature's previous efforts ‘to differentiate itself from the viewal ate, As thé text and image theoretician, WJ.T. Mitchell, observes in connection to these earlier attitudes: Painting ses itself uniquely fted for the representation ofthe visible world, wheeeas poetry is primarily concerned with the invisible vealm of ideas and feelings. Poetry is an art of time, motion, and zexion; painting an arc of space, stasis, and arrested action? ® Altei’s analyses foreground the osmotic relationship between the visual {ats and literature during te early heady days of modernism. The earlier { usitudes toward painting and poetty, 28 outlined by Mitchell, were regarded garde circles entaged by Victorian hypocrisy, and the fnadequacies of the ideals of Romanticism and the Enlightenment amidst the carnage of war. Altieri writes that the modernist poets ‘sought alter tive models of agency in the study of literary history, in the new ways of ing developed in their own time, and in the sual arts’ The visual ares had. 65 «as suspect by avanANIMATED ‘WORLDS’ 5 __ Trade Tattoo and Len Lye's Link with the Literary Avant-Garde poetry ‘was a lot of romanticised junk. Pd got this feeling as a kid, coming {© across Ella Wheeler Wilcox, and that level of maudlin stuf®.1” It was only o shen he met Graves and Riding that his intrest in poctry was sparked as Jere were these two sensible people immersed in poetry” Riding intro- ‘duced Tye to farther writers, and recognising talent in Lye's own writing J. che encouraged his literary output. Her literary experience was considerable in 1927 Riding and Graves co-authored a book,A Survey of Modernist rin), which had a huge impact on the way postry was written and read IC Her literary taste extended to the works of Gertrude Stein and James Joyce {rather than Virginia Woolf and "T'S. Eliot. Riding had « close association ‘with Gertrude Stein, and Lyc designed 2 frontispiece for one of Stein's * orks; Stein in turn admired the freshness of Lye's writing. In Riding’s own fe> poetry, she shared Stein's and Joyce's concem with alternatives to descrip- rion of linear time. She wrote that poetry “must make the present period snot so much the next one of a series asa resume of periods! bbeon moving away fiom ‘mimetic values’ and avant-garde liveraeure f0l45 lowed suit. creative ferment and galleries of Europe, he latched on to the potentiaiis fof Modernism through 3 book by Ezra Pound, abouta young sculptor killed Guring the First World War. The book was named after the artist, Gaur Breede, and contained his manifesto attacking the Western art tradition, proffering in its sicad a celebration of cave art and she tribal arts of Altica nd the Pacific. Len Lye had already begun to venture into chs alternative territory, finding the Maori and Pacific carvings in the Canterbury museum! in Christchurch an iresistibie hare. Lye valued their close link with kinetic Sensation and the unconscious, or what he termed the ‘Old Brain’, as 8 refreshing conteast to Western rationlisma.6 a ‘The composition of Len Lye’s social miliew in Hammersnith also reflects the intermingling of visual artists and writers, together with the subversion ‘of social conventions that Altieri has outlined. Lye became a member ofthe ‘Seven and Five Society’, a hotbed of Modernist visual innovation, which jneluded the painter Ben Nicholson and the sculptors Henry Moore and = Barbara Hepworth. Amongst Lye’s closest friends were the writers Laura’ Riding, Rober: Graves, and Norman Cameron, Riding had been involve | im the United States with an influential modernist group known as the 4 ‘Bugitives'~ one of her published pocms caught the eye of Robert Graves, who invited her co visit. Riding wound up living with Graves as his lover, While his wife Nancy Nicholson (the sister of Ben Nicholson) lived in a hharge on the Thames vith cheir children. The arrangement was regarded as trinity’, and for atime at least, was suecessfal.” t certainly illustrates the questioning of conventions that was a strong feature of the circle [Altieri writes of the Modernist quest to develop new modes of thinking; boundaries between artists and writers were consequently lowered and evolutionary ideas shared around. Laura Riding and Gertrude Stein, for example, both sought textual equivalents to Cubism's evocation of sirmul- taneous realities. In Lye’s ease, the concept driving the work was also the > essential ingredient — issues such as energy, temporality, and tapping into the ‘Old Brain’ remained predominant concerns, whether he was using painting, sculpture, filmmaking, or writingasa vehicle for their expression. Tefore embarking upon a close analysis of Trade Tatoo, it would be helpfial toconsider Lye'sconcems as awriter, 0 thathis approach to using animated text might be further illuminated. Over the next few paragraphs, compari- sons will be made with the innovations of peers who influenced Lye. Since Lye was a unique spirit, chartering new territory in a largely unexplored realm, qualities that ate intrinsically his own will also be foregrounded. ‘These featares will then be explored in relation to the merger of text and image in Trade Tattoo, and the impact of this aesthetic union upon the seructure of the fil. Graves and Riding were pivotal figures of the London Modernist scene, their flavin StPeter’s Squate a lively magnct for writers and artists, and their sdeas an alternative to those of the Bloomsbury set. Robert Graves had been dleeply traumatised by his experience of srench warfare from 1914-16, and ‘was searching for alternatives to the Western society that had fostered such ‘ieatastrophe. He read Freud, and researched into myth and early civil tions. Lye’s passion for tribal or ‘Old Brain’ art ignited Graves’ interestand prompted a close connection; in 1978 Lye reminisced that Graves had told hhim ‘we're the only two myth men Tknow'S One of Lye’s dominant creative concerns was the embodiment of a kinetic energy, suffased vith a ‘heart quality of resonance ~ as distinct from your bloody skull resonance’ In painting and sculpture, the technique of doodling provided an access route into the ‘Old Brain’; Lye wrote that dlondled to assuage my hunger for some hypnotic image Td never seen before’!® His sketchbooks, held in archives at the Len Lye Foundation in New Plymouth, New Zealand, are filled with pulsating lines and symbols, sometimes transforming into shapes that resemble wobbly amocbas, st2rs, tran exotic alphabet, Similarly, in writing, Lye valued a doodling src that bypassed rational logic and collapsed conventions of punctuation and a Lye's writer friends introduced him to a new world of literature. In an interview with Wystan Curnow, Lye described the jolt he reesived upon reading Norman Cameron's translation of Rimbaud's poetry: Take up’ The writing was profoundly visual and sensuous, and ‘each word was as if iewas cut out of marble. Not cut out, incised." Lye had initially thought 66ANIMATED ‘WORLDS’ grarnmar. The following segment appears in the book Ne Trouble, a com- pilation ofLye's letters o friends and family that was edited by Laura Riding in 1930, and published by Graves’ and Riding’s Seizin Press, The lack of punctuation hastens the stream of consciousness flow, from which markers Jntesmitcently appear that the reader might star to shape into images and narratives. This excerpt comes from a letter addressed to Ben Nicholson ‘Only justthe weather now A? Ouside in the sun buy yachtand go fora swt around the world easy jazz all sunburnt to working in tbe shade co mean rothing to do the most kind of work inthe world this isthe most important ‘world to me so after nothing follows imporcant work! ‘This passage transports the reader in a fishion that is Geewhecling, and it constantly takes one by surprise. Stylistically, there are echoes in Lye’s letter of the subconscious meandecings and rapid changes in register that perme- ate Joyce’s prose. Lye enthusiastically described James Joyce's language ia Finnegan's Woke as being ‘beautifully intactly lifted right from spontaneous rmind-level first thought.” Finnegan's Wake was published in 1939, wo years after Trade Tattoo's completion, bat instalments appeared prior to publication in Transition, a Parisian avant-garde magazine wich which Lavra Riding was closely connected. In this excerpt from Joyce's Ulysses, the flow of consciousness parallels Lys unfettered prose: ‘Two sheets cream vellum paper on reserve tw envelopes when [was in Wisdom Hely’s wise Bloom in Daly's Henry Flower bought. Lye and Joyce both discard traditional devices of punctuation, and gramn- snatical subversions and ambiguities draw atcention ro words as images and Sounds, and as sligpery agents of meaning, This self-reflexivity and asser- tion of the visual in the cextual was an aspect of modernist literary experi~ tnentation, anda result of a closer relationship with developments in the Ginusl arta In the excorpe from his leer, Lye playfully transforms the ‘colloquial expression ‘el into both a letter (A’) and an image, a polymor- phous representation evinced alsa in the work ofc. curamings, Guillaume Apollinaire, the conerete poets, and the painter Joan Miro. ‘One can draw parallels beeween Joyce and Lye’s subversion of grammatical conventions and the exuberant suspension of traditional modes of editing in Trade Tattoo. Links between the two artist’ approaches were also made by reviewers in the 1930s; a review of Joyce's Finnegan's Wake in the Glasgow Herald lamented the writing’s lack of clarity and that ‘one has to submit to Mr Joyce's flow of words as one submits to Len Lye’s films of abstract motion, to Shelley's play with celestial images, and to counterpoint in Bach’. Lye was disinterested in conventional literary narratives, and ‘Teade Tattoo combines a wild melange of approaches, ranging fom rapid jump cuts to motifs that creep along at a snail’s pace, In an essay entitled “Film-Making? that he co-wrote with Riding in 1935, Lye proclaimed that: 8 Trade Tatioo and Len Lye’s Link with the Literary Avant-Garde ‘The fanguage of the cinema is movement. When it atemps to make of rmovemene a hterary language the resule is 2 phsical-inellecaal caricature Innguage which furnishes stories of es something hal- through the night. The typewritten words, ‘The rhythm of trade is main- tained by the mails’, are zepeated three times, Just as the rhythm of Stein's words in her pocm ‘Eating’ reflects the concept of chewing, Lye’s use of repetition literally reinforces the words “The rhytln of trade” Lye’s semiotic soup becomes brimful in the last segment of Trade Tattoo ith an outpouring of signs denoting temporality and rhythm. These F-motifS range from the photographically realistic to cartoon-like tepre- 1ANIMATED ‘WORLDS’ sketches of frantic pendulums, marks in a circle representing minutes, ficking drawn clock hands, stencils of envelopes and patterns darting to and fro, all denote time. Their exuberancspontaneity and individuality however -SiRGG stress the importance and the freshness of the present moment, and the editing, which incorporates jump cuts together with longer stretches, furcher demands our immediate attention, and emphasises that time is 2 sequence of vial, sensory moments, At the film’s conclusion, Lye focuses ona real envelope surrounded by black space, with curvilinear handwriting that announces “The End’. It 000, like all of the text and images in Trade ano. is susceprible to transmutation, and itis transformed into a rectan~ gular shape as it recedes into limitless space. In an interview with Ray Thorburn that appeared in ‘Art International in #4 1974, Len Lye reminisced thatin the 1930s, ‘somebody once snd that Trade" ‘Tatton one hundred years would lookas fresh and frisky asanything going ‘on then and that was nice">' Ie is now seventy years since Trade Tattoo was created, and it still looks and feels startlingly vivid and fresh, Few films ean surpass it for aesthetic and conceptual richness. I represents the culmina- tion of Len Lye's exploration of modernist writing in the 1920s and 1930s, | and manifests his desterity in intertwining images and text Notes 1, Soke Dini, “Ths Ar of Narative = Towotde the Plosting Work of Are. Martin Reser Jp ‘auden Zapp, eés. Now Soren Mei, ChemalAiNartve (Londo Bria Bes Instn, png; 27-41 (Charles Att: Ptr sri a Mari rice Posy: Te Cournpwrent of Modeisa {(Cambrage: Univer rere, 189)2 300 248, Ibid: 24 ‘W).T. Michel. oly fas Ts, Hog (Chagos Universey of Capo Pes, 17 # Ar, 198954 ‘wyten Caraons “An ncervew ih Len ye" in A New Zand vol 17. 1980: 6 Deborah Baker ji Ess TeLfofLane Rig (London: Hamish Hams Le, 193): ‘Wyrm Camo 198: 6 wid 6. Ine 6 thd 6 hia: 6 Baker 13. ‘Wysan Curnow. 190 6L Roger Horeocks, Lae Ly (Aucktand Auchand University Pres, 200: 91, ‘Whetn Caton and Roger Horrocks Fier of Morin: Leu Lye Slated Wig (Auclan ‘Auckland Untvessey Press, 1988) 98 18, Jaro Joys Ups (New York: Vinge Boos, 1961): 2 19, Reletons for M: Joy's Distartng Miron, The lag el (1 May 195), el in dhe Lon ye Arve New Piro Nw Zend" Hea (May 189) Carne and Moreh, 1984 Gere Sein ana Me New al Hee Ln (Hartondevorth engin, 4) 13, Bap orcs My Word My Wola 205 (Ong: Unive of Ong Pres 2) ‘Cornaw and Horrocks. 1984: 14, "This image ppeatesourteryof ager Hurrocks aud he Len Lye Foundason. Roger Horodls, Le Lye (NveRland: Auckland Univeriy Pasa, 2), 151, Ibid 151, ie: 35, 135 CCarow ao Horrocks 13 [wah wo aclwledge Roger Horrocks or ehis observation, ia cansersnon ith the nchor, a 208. 231 Ray Thorbuen lmterviews Len Lye sin, (VO KIK Api. 1975} 6, Miriam Farris sa lecuurer in Media Design and Animation the Unitec Instinate (fTechnology, Auckland, New Zealand. Sheisanartistandanimator, anda graduate ofthe Post Graduate Diploma programme in Digital Animatioa and Visual Effects ar Sheridan College, Canaula, She is nearing completion on a PhD that explores the intertwining of txt image, and narrative n