Animation provides a moving space where we can escape from the daily routine of life. But it also provides us with a unique opportunity to reshape how we envision the world. Through the lens of animation we are taken into a world of magical realism, heroic feats of bravery, or just a simple reorientation of how the world could be. This thesis examines various animations and their creators, taking an in depth look at how objects shape their world and ours.

Animation has a unique ability in that it uses objects to elicit an emotional response through movement. This thesis looks at the ways in which emotions are solicited through the use of phenomenological space and how those emotions play an important role on how we navigate through the world.

How we navigate the spaces where we dwell, both domestic and social, truly depends on bodily experience and how those bodies are situated in space. Animation allows us to critically investigate this orientation and explore how it affects our experience and understanding of the world. Such investigation not only allows us to analyze why we are oriented in certain ways, it also allows us to determine our own orientation. This thesis will show how animation does phenomenology in a way that no other media does. We will look at various examples of animation—including object animation, hand drawn animation, and puppetry—to both define and redefine the spaces we inhabit. We will tie together the threads of the philosophy behind phenomenology, looking at how we can understand our personal orientations towards the world and how we have the power to shift perception.

Haiyan – Music and video footage by Antonio Valdenor Jr

Installation and Animation by Jill Sattler

Low Residency MFA in Visual Studies (LRVS)