+ info: Minnesota Press
Andrew R. Johnston presents both a revealing history of abstract animation and an investigation into the relationship between animation and cinema. Examining a rich array of techniques—including etching directly onto the filmstrip, immersive colored-light spectacles, rapid montage sequences, and digital programming—Pulses of Abstraction uncovers important epistemological shifts around film and related media.
Pulses of Abstraction utterly transforms our understanding of the form and history of animation. Diving deep into techno-aesthetic experiments with form in abstract animation—lines, color, photograms, frequencies, and digital codes—it shows that animation is not merely a kind or genre of cinema. Animation is the mode of technical individuation for moving image media, a vital creating that gathers up individual artists, artworks, and audiences in a distinctive movement of thought. Andrew R. Johnston thus overturns film history, too, revealing a non-linear pulse of techno-animist dissensus rumbling beneath our chronological habits.
