Esther Leslie

Animation Deviation was organised by Vicky Smith at UWE. There was a smaller turnout than Edinburgh, which was puzzling because it was also excellent. It was opened by a keynote from Esther Leslie, who was so bright, in every way, and talking about lightness as well. Her keynote was a perfect following Animation Evolution I won’t be able to do it justice here because she sort of flies around, but it all makes perfect sense in the end. She mused on liquid crystal displays and the way that the screen collaborates in sort of petrifying or embedding the animation within it’s make-up because there are no flickers or frames, just on and off, lightness and darkness, what she referred to as petrified unrest. That was very interesting to think about because in animation there is much focus on the continuous. She talked about John Gerrard’s animated scenes, it’s the first time I have thought about the way that pig effluent might be animated. Then she talked about saccadian vision; our eyes don’t really look at things smoothly, we scan things more like the second hand of a clock, so what we see is a series of fixed pictures, with the odd blink in there too. Then how did she get on to metamorphosis and Grandville (Jean Isidore Gerard, 1803-46) and the frog he kept on his desk, Mr Cryptogame (see illus.) and the creative possibilities of the wobble or tremble in nanotechnology? This is a layman’s report, I didn't promise anything more.
More later.