The “First Step” of Images the Tangible Illusion of Stop-Motion

Over time, stop-motion animation has proven to be a setting for experimentation with idioms and modes of expression, involving, at present, not only the cinema and the visual arts, but modes of communication pertaining to everything from children’s products to advertising, as well as audio-visual messaging and information, digital communication and social media. Such works, by their very nature, share features of the “cool” media, meaning media, such as cartoons, that engender high levels of participation by providing limited visual information which the public must then complete on its own (McLuhan, 1967). They also draw on the factors of attraction typical of the “System of Demonstrative Attractions” of the primordial cinema (Gunning, 2004), and without hiding their artificial essence, “clearly revealing themselves to be an expression of their creator’s subjective «realism»” (Ajanović, 2005). To a certain extent, stop motion stands as an archetype, a primitive form of animation which highlights the contradiction “between the irrefutable objectivity of the photographic image and the incredible nature of the event” (Bazin 2008). This explains how the stop-motion technique has survived the change in paradigm brought about in animation by the new digital technologies, which have subverted, supplemented and, above all else, masked the perception of what is real and unreal. Indeed, the coexistence of fiction and reality found in frame-by-frame animation would appear to generate unique dimensions of perception which bring into play not only sight, but other components of the viewer’s sensorial apparatus as well (Guerra & Gallese, 2015). In exploring this array of factors, the paper examines the visual statute of stop-motion animation by analysing and comparing various artefacts, from the first experimental works of the late 1800’s to the latest projects combining stop-motion and new digital technologies. The fundamental objective of the study is to identify the constants and variables of this type of animation, throwing light on the role it has come to play in the panorama of visual communications.