Research is an important part of the Animation programme’s activity, in which staff and students are involved. Animation welcomes research applications to contribute to the development of an innovative Animation Research environment.
MPhil and PhD students follow their own bespoke research route supported by the programme and the wider College. Students attend a stimulating Research Methods Course alongside Research students and staff from across the College to develop their expertise and methods of investigating their research field. Each research student is guided by one or more supervisors and additional specialist advisers.
Some research students use the facilities at the College, while others access specialist facilities, archives and resources further afield.
Research in Animation is organised thematically around clusters of interests, alongside Visual Communication research. The programme’s research strategy aims to engage with a more philosophical approach towards understanding the role of communication and film theory and practice in culture and society, and the ways in which filmmakers, artists and designers work. To this end, research is seen as a conduit for ideas alongside exploring ideas through process and practice. Together with the Visual Communication programme, we run a Research Symposium each year.
Animation and the Real: Documentary Animation Twenty-first century animation practice is increasingly hybrid in form and aesthetics, as well as present in other forms of visual culture. As new uses for animated imagery emerge, and as the expertise of animation artists widens, this pervasiveness creates new challenges and opportunities for cross-disciplinary collaborations. One of the most dynamic area of convergence is the documentary form, where the penetration of animation has been very visible: Documentary claims and associated conventions are increasingly visible in animation practice. A growing number of long -format documentaries use animation to represent their subject. Animation has also found its way into other disciplines preoccupied with representing the real (scientific research, therapy, education). Both the animation and documentary academic communities show a strong interest in the form; questions of ‘animated reality’ and the ‘documentary value of animation’ have become a vivid focus in Animation education and scholarship, and have had a sustained presence in documentary research culture in the past decade.
These trends outline opportunities for cross-disciplinary collaborations, the access of animators to independent long-format production and important new avenues for animation research. The MA Animation programme proposes to address these new avenues through the provision of specific support and training in documentary processes, as a strand of its Animation programme.
Current projects include: Animation Therapy (NESTA funded)
Staff active in this area: Sylvie Bringas, Joan Ashworth, Tim Webb, Joe King
Related projects in this area: A is for Autism by Tim Webb; Silences produced by Sylvie Bringas
Visual Narratives are projects that employ the innovative use of word and image to explain or entertain. This area builds on the Programme’s expertise in animation, creative writing and moving image and explores new ways of communicating ideas or telling stories through the relationship between image and text. Recent projects include: The Secret Life of Objects (book) and Hot Milk Madonna (film) by Deborah Levy; Mushroom Thief by Joan Ashworth; and Six of One by Tim Webb.
Staff active in this area: Deborah Levy, Joan Ashworth, Tim Webb.
Landscape, Environment and Culture is a cluster of projects, that explore both the natural and the artificial environment as a source of meaning and identity; projects exploring landscape imagery and sound in the context of memory, history and community.
Recent projects in this area: Strange Lights by Joe King; Mushroom Thief by Joan Ashworth.
Analogue / Digital are projects that explore the interface and overlap between analogue and digital technologies, and look at ways in which traditional ‘craft’ media and processes can be used alongside developments in digital technology; we’re interested in the ‘hybrid’ processes that are emerging from this overlap, with a particular focus on single-frame manipulation, drawing with light, inventive engineering/animation machines and sound.
Staff active in this area: Joe King, Tim Webb.
Moving Image is a cluster of film and video projects, typified by experimental self-authored pieces for projection in cinemas, galleries, theatres and public spaces. Recent projects include Sea Change by Joe King.
Staff active in this area: Joe King, Tim Webb, Joan Ashworth.
Alex Jukes, MPhil by project
Chunhui Meng, MPhil by project
Tereza Stehlíková, PhD by project
Susan Young, MPhil by project