Thinking across Frames – Temporally Extended Consciousness and the Animation Timeline

Abstract

This article explores ways in which animation production technologies (including pre-cinema, film, and digital tools) have evolved as a system that abstracts time, primarily through its spatialization. This abstraction necessitates certain assumptions about the nature of time, including its linearity and directionality. Animation technologies have evolved so as to support various modes of temporally extended consciousness; an animator’s craft thinks and works through time. Embedded within digital production technologies, the animator is faced with a new philosophical instrument: the animation timeline. The main timeline utility in most animation software adopts a linear, mechanical model of time with the individual frame as the base unit. However, digital animation timeline can also complicate the spatialized temporal dimension, as the timeline is also embedded within animated objects in motion paths and other interface elements . As animated objects always exist through time, not merely within individual frames, the animation software tools for working with time both confine and unlock opportunities for working with time.