Art in Motion: The Aesthetics of Animation

I attended Leeper’s lecture last night. The point I gathered from his speech is that animation has a deeper meaning in the world today. We have to look past the first view, the face, the cover of it and we have to search for the deeper meaning. In “Tchou, Tchou” by Co Hoedeman, which was one of Leeper’s mentors, the town was made of blocks. The people were made of blocks as well as the trees. There was a girl and a boy that were walking around and suddenly all of the people and animals started hiding. There was a dragon that was running around terrorizing the play land. The land was meant to represent the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve and the serpent. There was another video called “Amnesty International 50^th Anniversary” by Carlos Lascono. This video probably touched me the most, it showed different events that have happened in the past 50 years in the most troubled places in the world. It showed things such as the KKK and the Holocaust as well as other events. This video was beautiful. One of the first things that Leeper said was “Beauty is more than pretty things.” He wasn’t kidding, nothing about this video was pretty, but it was beautiful. There is more to animation than what you see on the surface.