Notes from the Underground Part Six — From Mary Ellen Bute to Pierre Hébert, Animation in a Different Key! | AWN

Notes from the Underground Part Six — From Mary Ellen Bute to Pierre Hébert, Animation in a Different Key!

In this final installment of articles exploring animation as commercial entertainment and as an art form, Jean Detheux heralds a group of animators who listened to their own music and delivered it up on the animated screen.

By Jean Detheux | Monday, June 30, 2003 at 12:00 am

Posted In | Magazines: AnimationWorld | Columns: DigitalNotes


Mood_Contrasts clip 1 and clip 2 by Mary Ellen Bute. Courtesy of Cecile Starr.

When I first saw her work during a retrospective at the Ottawa International Animation Festival in 1998, I had recently switched to digital tools from natural media (for health reasons), and was toying with the idea of starting to work in digital animation. That retrospective tipped the balance much more so than any other animated film I had seen till then. The works may seem a bit rough at times (due to the tools she was forced to use — there were no personal computers in her day), but they contain the seeds (sometimes even more than that) of what I am convinced is "another animation," one that is to linear storytelling's character animation what, in painting, Cézanne, Giacometti and some of the abstract expressionists were to 19th century salon painting.

As a matter of fact, this comparison holds even more for me today, given the fact that "habitual animation" is the salon painting of our day, and that we are still very much in search of a form of animation that would be as relevant to us as were the many painting "movements" that liberated themselves from the limitations of salon painting and its underlying world view. I think that at the root of the control that "habitual animation" has on much of the current animation field lies a very severe confusion between art and entertainment. Art is (or at least can, or should, be) about the exploration, the unfolding, the "making visible" of all that we are. This is a search that accepts all that surfaces during the work, with no censoring, while "entertainment" is really a negation of, or a rest from, that search (the "Prozac" of my first article in this series).

I truly believe that animation has been turned into an overly specialized "skill," somewhat similar to trade groups complicating their otherwise fairly simple procedures in order to keep the market to themselves and the uninitiated out.

I am fortunate enough to have a gifted 5-year-old son, Georges, and together we have been exploring digital image and animation making. Here's one such animation we made together using 131 images he painted, all by himself, in Studio Artist. His sister, Yolande (14) made the music track.

Georges 1 Image by Georges Detheux; Animation by Georges and Jean Detheux; Music by Yolande Detheux.

It is a privilege to work/play with a 5-year-old; he shows me time after time after time that "expression is not at the end of knowledge," that it is available right here and now, regardless of age, knowledge and experience.

I had a similar experience with a group of 13- and 14-year-old kids I am working/playing with in a "digital art" class ("art numérique") I teach at a local elementary school (Ecole J.-L. Couroux in Carleton Place, Ontario). These kids, with absolutely no prior art training, are often creating gorgeous work. (When we built the present Website, we were limited mostly to still images at that time, but now have better tools for animation, and will have examples of that online shortly.)

Time and time again, their work shows me the truth in the motto of Jason Belec's NOITAMINANIMATION: "It's not rocket science."

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Thanks a lot. I needed that.

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Daniel Poeira (not verified) | Tue, 07/08/2003 - 00:00 | Permalink

To Tony Saliste: You say: “yes, pablum, as you call it, is pervasive today... but, like they say about tv, that's what the remote is for. mindless stupidity is present in many areas, and all some are capable of... leave them to it.” Tony, zapping is only as good as that which we can zap to. There are practically no alternatives to pabulum these days, the “suits” have managed, through decades of enforced dumbing down programming, to create expectations in the minds of the viewers so that pabulum is what is mostly expected (and offered). Read the comments to my six articles, time and again you will see this visceral reaction to my positing “Art” as important and distinct from (indeed "better than") “entertainment,” accusing me of being “elitist.” Animation is this amazing medium that is being totally swamped by mindless stupidity, “escapism” (“Prozac”) is the dominant force in it, and I most certainly see no openness to something a bit more “mature,” more life-sustaining. Even animation festivals are under the crunch of budget cuts unless they go even more into commercial servitude. And as for TV, that is utterly hopeless, when was the last time you had a chance to see quality animation on it, with or without cable? You say: “the problem, and i think you will agree, is so much of it is 'published' and deemed as 'art'... perhaps to them it is. others of us may not 'like' that, but, so what? if no one pays attention to it, it, too, shall pass. when the 'suits' have squeezed the last nickle out of any fad, true 'art' will survive.” Indeed, we are in a situation that is quite amazing, the “brainwashing” has been so very successful, the expectations have been shaped so “well,” and the frame of reference contained even “better” (the Weltanschauung), the more one focuses on intrinsic worth and inherent universal “stuff,” the more one appears to be an “outsider.” As I said in some of my previous writing, the basic belief is that “the eye works like a camera and we all see the same thing.” That is likely why so many “different” major animation productions actually look the same to me, they all are born of the same world view. You say: “if it takes another 50 years, i say, have at it, knock yourselves out. just don't expect to make a fan out of me.” You must be a lot younger than me, I most definitely do not have 50 years ahead of me, far from it. Besides, why should one wait? If one can switch from being a mere viewer to becoming a doer, now’s the (only?) time!

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Jean Detheux (not verified) | Sat, 07/05/2003 - 00:00 | Permalink

jean, what you say is true, if a bit too far in the other direction... i'm sure your intent was not to stifle exploration of the media, including animation and music. there are more than two sides to animation, as in all art, stories, or lies. yes, pablum, as you call it, is pervasive today... but, like they say about tv, that's what the remote is for. mindless stupidity is present in many areas, and all some are capable of... leave them to it. the problem, and i think you will agree, is so much of it is 'published' and deemed as 'art'... perhaps to them it is. others of us may not 'like' that, but, so what? if no one pays attention to it, it, too, shall pass. when the 'suits' have squeezed the last nickle out of any fad, true 'art' will survive. if it takes another 50 years, i say, have at it, knock yourselves out. just don't expect to make a fan out of me.