FRAME BY FRAME: ANIMATED AT HARVARD at THE CARPENTER CENTER
Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts
Details:
January 28–Feb 14, 2010
Reception Thursday, January 28, 5:30-6:30 pm
The birth of animation at Harvard goes back to the opening of the Carpenter Center in 1963. Former director Robert Gardner engaged John and Faith Hubley as teachers, the first in a long line of distinguished animators to teach at Harvard. In the mid-1960s, Derek Lamb, via the Film Board of Canada in Montreal, taught and mentored Caroline Leaf and Eli Noyes, both pioneers in their field. Subsequent faculty in animation have included Jan Lenica, George Griffin, Mary Beams, Frank Mouris, David Anderson, Dennis Pies, Janet Perlman, Suzan Pitt, Caroline Leaf, Piotr Dumala, Steven Subotnick, Wendy Tilby, Simon Pummell, and Andreas Hykade. Ruth Lingford is currently professor of the practice of animation, and the 2009-10 visiting faculty are David Lobser, Dan Sousa, and Sarah Jane Lapp.
Animation tends to be a condensed art form, using metamorphosis and metaphor to collide and expand meaning. In this way it resembles poetry. It is a way of expressing and communicating invisible, abstract ideas, allowing us to analyze and deconstruct time and to understand movement as both a liquid flow and a sequence of distinct infinitesimals. While only a few students specialize in animation for their final thesis work, a wide range of students take one or two animation classes during their time at Harvard. Students are encouraged to use the particular demands and rewards of animation to help them think differently about the world.
http://www.ves.fas.harvard.edu/framebyframe.html