Individual Animation Project #2

Due last session, 12/11/14

Conceive, design, and produce a short animation that comments on some aspect of Jacques Derrida's concept of the parergon, also referred to as "framing". This is an important concept in the Postmodern tradition. See the Critical Paradigms section of my website and the Derrida Framing" Overview page for help understanding this topic.

There are no restrictions on the content or style of your animation -- as long as you are thoughtful and as long as you are commenting in some way on this concept of parergon/framing. You may agree with it or disagree with it. You may ridicule it or praise it. You may dissect it, replicate it, or destroy it. You may limit yourself to the Western tradition, or include other non-Western traditions. You may focus on animation, film-making, still imagery -- any artform, or all artforms. Your animation may be narrative or non-narrative, realistic or abstract. It may involve characters or no characters, recognizable objects or none. Anything is possible, as long as you are thoughtful and comment on the postmodern concept of parergon/framing.

Your animation will necessarily be very short because of our production scedule, Typical running times might be between 5 seconds and 20 seconds. However long it is, your animation must be fully finalized and complete by the due date.

The final format of your animation will depend on your final intended display. Some possibilities include: viewing on a monitor; projection onto a large screen; display on a hand-held device; part of an interactive display; part of a static image work. The final display must be considered as an integral part of your design from the beginning of your production process.

Note: At approximately the mid-point of this project, I will give you feedback on what I feel is your progress. This will not be a grade, but will give you a sense of what grade you might expect to receive if you continue working as you have been.

Write a short statement about what your concerns are in your animation work and in this specific project#2 animation.

On the due date, bring to class all materials needed to display your finished work. Also post both your animation and your statement to your blog. If necessary, post your animation to Vimeo or a similar site and link to it from your blog.

Finally, hand in to me one or more DVD disks containing an uncompressed file of your finished animation, plus any appropriate working files, plus a PDF file of your statement.