Animating the Frenzy of the Possible via Internet Collaboration and the Super
Mario Afterlife

By
Alex Tripp
BA Liberal Arts, Evergreen State College, 2007

A THESIS ESSAY SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE
REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF APPLIED ART
in
Media

EMILY CARR UNIVERSITY OF ART + DESIGN
2010

© Alex Tripp, 2010

Abstract
The research found in this paper poses inquiries into postmodern animation in relation
to the aesthetic effects of stylistic constraints. I propose that contemporary consumers of
animation possess an inherent awareness of the limitations of what can and will be depicted
based purely on their knowledge of what is technically possible. Using philosopher Gilles
Deleuze's concept of the virtual and striated space, and contemporary theorist Jean‐Luc
Comolli's understanding of the ways in which technologies are adopted and abandoned, I
introduce the idea of the “frenzy of the possible.” This idea pertains to a state wherein a
viewer facing a work that adheres to a singular, unified style experiences a level of comfort
that is based on limitation. This paper and its accompanying animation Pratfall Origarch are
investigations into hybridity that by contrast function primarily through a process of
discomforting the viewer. By combining diverse styles such as hand‐drawn and computer
assisted animation, green‐screen live action footage, video game hacking, and more, I have
crafted an aesthetic which establishes expectations just long enough to subvert them.
In addition to Deleuze’s and Comolli’s concepts, I draw on the importance of
community‐based online collaboration in the context of a long history and sustained
knowledge of gaming. To this end, the Grand Guignol theatre’s combination of violence and
comedy is contrasted with the modern examples of the Electric Retard webcomic and the
animated program Xavier: Renegade Angel. Further to this, the act of playing the video game
Super Mario Bros. is reflected upon as a way of demonstrating the striated virtual (a concept
developed in this paper), and the role of intuition in learning how to use technology for
ii

artmaking. Instability, as a concept and as a method, is both the point of arrival and departure
for investigation.

iii

Table of Contents
ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………………….....ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS…………………………………………………………………..……iv
LIST OF FIGURES…………………………………………….…………………………..…….v
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS……………………………………………………………………vi
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS…………………………………………………………….………vii
DEDICATION………………………………………………………………………...…….…….viii
INTRODUCING……………………………………………………………………………………………...…….1
1 CHAPTER 1 Caught in an Internet….………………………..……………………………...……………..4
1.1 Postmodernism and the Story of Soulseek Records…….…………………………..…..4
1.2 Feeling Bad for Laughing at the Grand Guignol..…………………………….....………..12
2 CHAPTER 2 The Frenzy of the Possible…….……………………......................................…...16
3 CHAPTER 3 Where Does Super Mario Go When He Dies?………..….………………….……..22
CONCLUSION.............................................................................................................33
WORK CITED (MLA)……………………………………………………………………………....34
WORK CONSULTED (MLA)………………………………………………………………….…..36
APPENDIX…………………………………………………………………………………………......37

iv

List of Figures
FIGURE 1. Jay Harmon Repulsive Creatures (2009) Illustration, Used with permission……………………………….....10
FIGURE 2. Alex Tripp Manipulation of Repulsive Creatures (2009) Animation………..………………………….……….....11
FIGURE 3. Alex Tripp Character Design from Manipulation (2009) Illustration……………………………………..…….....11

v

List of Abbreviations
P2P – Peer‐to‐Peer.
IDM – Intelligent Dance Music.
SSS – Soulseek Sampling Series.
NES – Nintendo Entertainment System.

vi

Acknowledgements
I am indebted to Joy James and Martin Rose for their services as faculty supervisors of my
thesis research. I would also like to acknowledge my other faculty at Emily Carr; Glen Lowry,
Fiona Bowie, Harry Killas, Henry Tsang, Randy Lee Cutler, Julie Andreyev, and Babak Golkar, for
the support they offered during my time at the university. The thesis research would not be
possible without the advancements put forth by the artists and authors whose work this essay
cites. And finally, I must acknowledge the artists who contributed work to my animation, and
helped make my thesis project what it is.

vii

Dedication

For Seth.

viii

Introducing...
...The Author
I have a distinct memory as a child of watching a Saturday morning cartoon that made
use of the painted background technique in which characters and the objects they interact
with are animated with a small, bright palette on clear sheets of plastic. In this technique, the
background is a still image that employs a full spectrum of color, upon which characters are
then overlaid. In the cartoon, a group of characters were walking through a hallway filled with
a number of doors, all of which were a part of the painted background and which shared
qualities with other static background elements of the environment. Suddenly a door
appeared that was distinctly different from the ones that preceded it. This door was
distinguished by qualities of color that were similar to that of the animated characters. Upon
seeing this door I immediately thought “that's the door!”, and I was able to predict where the
characters would be going based solely on the fact that the material and technical means of
production affiliated that specific door with the action of the characters. I was merely a child
then, and had no knowledge of the techniques behind the production of that animation.
However, my intuitive understanding of the sameness that existed between that door and the
characters in relation to the difference provided by the background allowed for an experience
of “unintentional reflexivity”: a sequence of events, of which I was only subliminally aware,
that led me to make an accurate prediction of what would happen.

1

...The Mediums
The project that accompanies this paper takes two forms. The first, a short animated
piece, implements the theoretical positions I will introduce in the following chapters. This
theory is utilized to create a work that is not limited by activating in the viewer the
unintentional reflexivity referred to above. It is opposed to providing the viewer with the
ability to predict the course of the narrative. The mechanism for this implementation is a
hybrid animation style, using permutations and combinations of techniques that mitigate
against the viewer intuiting the narrative outcome from the material conditions of production.
Rather than the practical considerations for the generation of an image dictating the process,
the goal, which is framed by a reverence for surprise, is to use techniques according to how
they influence the emotional resonance of an image. I employ an experimental narrative that
runs parallel to this technological approach, exploring the potential of selective incoherence by
privileging processes of fragmentation and collage, within a consistency provided by the
characters and a linear passage of time.
The second form of the project entails the development of an artist community website
24hourcastle.com. This website is crucial to the realization of the hybrid animation style I seek.
With the development of this online community I emphasize the act of collaborative creation,
designing multiple tasks for participants to complete. These tasks have generated some of the
content for my animation.

...The Methodology
The methodology implemented in this research reflects the innovations of the thesis
animation project. The methodology is framed by postmodernist and poststructuralist theory;
2

the histories of animation; innovative animation techniques and co‐creative practice in
animation; the political implications of humor; video gaming and the Internet; and the
narration of first‐person experiences within animation culture. Elaborating these multiple
connections allows me to position my work in a historical context, and highlight the particular
knowledge contribution this project represents. This is a methodology of hybridity. I am
arguing for an approach that finds depth in multiplicity. This essay simultaneously exemplifies
and makes a case for these methodological strategies. My intent in the following pages is to
demonstrate through the juxtaposition of a variety of approaches knowledge that can only be
generated at their points of connection. This paper represents both a manifesto concerned
with an approach to artmaking in general, in addition to specific ideas unique to my chosen
medium of animation.

3

Chapter 1: Caught in an Internet
Postmodernism and the Story of Soulseek Records
The relevance of postmodernism to my research can best be explained through an
examination of the evolution of Soulseek Records, an artist community that formed around the
Peer‐to‐Peer (P2P) filesharing network Soulseek. P2P software such as Soulseek or Napster
allowed users to share files with one another, with the primary use being the illegal sharing of
music. Full disclosure: I was a participant in the activities of Soulseek Records, and my music
can be found on a few of their releases under the artist name ACP.
Throughout my life, I have been immersed in the ambiguity and fragmentation that
characterizes the postmodern moment. In the anecdote that began this essay, I describe a
childhood memory of a reflexive experience that depended on intuition, and I linked that
intuitive experience to a specific aesthetic. This is an important link because the concept of
reflexivity in relation to aesthetics is defined as “the practice of making viewers aware of the
material and technical means of production by featuring those aspects as 'content' of a cultural
production” (Sturken and Cartwright 364). In what follows I will be focusing on those aspects
of postmodernism most relevant to my work: the aforementioned experience of reflexivity and
the act of pastiche.
Pastiche is a practice intimately connected to postmodernism as a condition of cultural
production whereby elements of form from a variety of styles are combined as a singular
aesthetic which celebrates idiosyncrasy, homage, or a combination of the two. It has a "quasi‐
anonymous definition... as 'neither original nor copy'" (Hoestery 5). The practice of pastiche
developed out of the sixteenth‐century Italian practice of pasticcio, a "highly imitative painting
4

that synthesized‐'stirred together'‐the styles of major artists, often with seemingly fraudulent
intentions, i.e., to deceive viewers or patrons" (Hoestery 1).
Over time, pasticcio was transformed into a process for music and film called pastiche
structuration. This is a technique that "in many contemporary films goes beyond mere
quotation to comprise a complex medley and layering of different styles and motifs"
(Hoesterey 46). Although many films have illustrated this process, music criticism of the past
decade clearly shows that this is not a medium‐specific phenomenon. David Day describes the
musician M.I.A's Arular in his review for Dusted Magazine:
[...] a blaring, drum‐machine driven mish‐mash of, well, all sorts of shit:

dancehall, Asian beat, old school hip hop, baile funk and grime. It's music
generated from the Gulf of Mexico, the Bay of Bengal and the North Sea. Or,
better, it's Ragga meets Ghettotech meets Bollywood Breaks. (Day)
The structural reconfiguration of established elements into alternate forms is a touchstone of
current practices of pastiche. The key to it resonating with an audience is the condition that
the audience be aware of the established practices being used. There is as much pastiche in
M.I.A's Arular as there is in Day's list‐making. In fact, M.I.A's pastiche requires a co‐operation
highlighted by Day in his review, which emphasizes that the pastiche itself is co‐generated by
the music and the listener. The importance of the relationship between artist and audience in
the creation of meaning in an artwork present in the practice of pastiche is also a key
component of my research focus.
Indeed, pastiche was the practice of choice used in the Soulseek Records Massacre
series and Soulseek Sampling Series projects. The Massacre series, as described on the
Soulseek Records website entry for One Minute Massacre Volume 1, is that "each artist
5

creates 1‐2 minutes of music which is then passed to the next artist, who smoothly (or not so
smoothly) picks up from the end and attaches another 1‐2 minutes of his or her own"
(Timpanelli). In this project, the idea of creating a derivative work was just as valuable, if not
more so, than focusing on the implementation of an 'original' work. When I first approached
the Soulseek Records Massacre project, it was clear to me that the ideal form of the project as
a whole was one in which the work functions as an homage to itself; a continuous piece of
music that while containing stylistic differences achieves a distinct unification through self‐
referentiality (which can be, of course, a form of reflexivity). However, the desires of the
individual artists who come together in the Massacre project actually serve to prevent the
metaphorical pâté, associated with the term pastiche, from occurring. All was not lost,
however, as threads of pastiche did emerge through the creation of lineages. A standout
example can be found on One Minute Massacre Volume 1 in the form of a contribution from
music critic Matt Wellins. Wellins simply took the song previous to his and recorded himself
criticizing the song as it played. The creation of a lineage comes about when the following
artist then sampled Wellins' criticism, taking Wellins’ voice and using it in the musical
structures that Wellins had criticized. This represents an important moment because not only
was the practice of creating emergent lineages uncommon in the industry, it occurs only briefly
in the Massacre series itself. Indeed, the example of creating lineages within a compilation
album can be cited as a sort of statistical outlier in relation to the development of an aesthetic.
On the large majority of the tracks in this series, there is a moment in which the listener can
tell that the artist begins operating under their own constraints rather than critically
responding to the work of another artist on the compilation as they had done previously. But
the struggle with the representation of an ideal pastiche is ever‐present in each entry.
6

We can see a similar struggle in the Soulseek Sampling Series (SSS), a project wherein
each month a different artist assembled a collection of sounds, which people would then use
for the creation of another piece of music. Although elements of pastiche existed, the primary
concept at play in this project was bricolage, a means of “'making do' or piecing together […]
whatever is at hand" (Sturken and Cartwright 64). What it is important to note here, is that not
only do the artists create new lineages commenting on the ideas of other artists, but they also
bricolage “found” or otherwise already existing objects. In this process, the artists in question
manipulated samples, structuring and arranging them over a timeline, altering the qualities of
the sounds themselves through effect processes. Pastiche comes into play in the shared
experience between participating artists all working with the same sounds, and able to
compare their own practices of making with the work of others.
In my own work, the influence of Soulseek Records is reflected in both the hybrid
aesthetic that I use and the development of the artist community, 24hourcastle.com. The
activities of Soulseek Records inspired my development as an artist; by eliminating some
elements of choice, I was able to more closely focus on an aesthetic that relied on pastiche.
Based around a methodology of sample manipulation, I was able to treat the various
constraints as a playground within which I developed strong beliefs about how I wanted to put
sound together in music. After being given the space to develop my aesthetic sensibility I was
self‐motivated to create even more work outside of any artificial constraints, and it was at that
point that I began to take artistic practice seriously. I owe a great deal to the collaborative
community of Soulseek Records, and I hope to continue the spirit of that community at
24hourcastle.com in order to provide other developing artists with a space in which they can
grow.
7

In some aspects I worked to remedy the limitations I identified in my experience with
the Soulseek Records community. After beginning in 2002, Soulseek Records completed an
entry in the Massacre series annually, ending in 2007, following which the organization all but
ceased to be. The artists’ chat room on the Soulseek P2P program was empty, and whatever
community was left felt inaccessible to participants. The question, then, is what are the factors
that led to the community's formation and why was its peak activity not sustained for a longer
period of time? This question is of tremendous importance to my research as I am using
Soulseek Records as a case study to develop my own artistic community.
To answer the question we must first look to the origins of Soulseek, the P2P software.
It was initially launched to the small community of fans around the electronic music subgenre
of Intelligent Dance Music, or IDM. My own experience of discovering the software was
finding the Soulseek URL placed into the filenames of every contemporary IDM release on
other filesharing networks. In this initial promotional period for Soulseek, a large number of
the IDM fans who joined the service also made their own electronic music in some capacity,
and it was from this focused community of artists that the Soulseek Records collective drew.
As such, the projects that were initiated were geared towards those who made electronic
music. Artists operating within that genre had a much easier time using recorded material and
manipulating it into work of their own. This resulted in a lack of diversity in artistic approach
dominating the community and stagnating its growth.
A further point involves the nature of the filesharing on the Soulseek software. The
protocol used is one of direct connection. A user shares a file, and another user searches, finds
that file, and downloads directly from the single sharing source. If the sharing user
disconnects, the download ceases. In 2001, the BitTorrent protocol was developed. Rather
8

than a single direct connection for the file, the torrent allows a user to connect to a large cloud
of users, all uploading and downloading the same file or files. These multiple connections
allow for much greater speed in downloading and the transfers are considerably more reliable.
With Soulseek, if the user being downloaded from disconnects, the transfer ends and the user
is left with an incomplete file. With BitTorrent, any number of people can disconnect, but so
long as the downloader is connected to one person, the transfer continues. Over the course of
the decade users migrated from direct connection software such as Soulseek, to clients which
utilized the BitTorrent protocol. By 2007, a study of P2P downloading by Ipoque in Australia,
Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, Germany, and the Middle East found that 66.7% of P2P
traffic was using the BitTorrent client (Internet Study 2007). Soulseek and the community of
artists using the software began forming before the BitTorrent client's development. As users
adopted BitTorrent, they abandoned Soulseek, which in turn led to diminishing participation in
Soulseek Records.
Although the community is still active, and as of December 9, 2009 is currently
preparing a compilation album centered on astrological signs, the activity is still diminished
from the amount of work produced between 2003‐2004, when both the SSS and Massacre
series were active. With that in mind, I have attempted to avoid these obstacles for
community growth, focusing the website solely around the idea of the unrestricted
presentation of any artwork, and the facilitation of any artistic collaboration. Rather than
having the community based around something not related to artmaking, and linked
inextricably to the popularity of a particular thing, I have established 24hourcastle.com which
has as its sole focus being artists and their practices. I hope to develop a community which

9

presents the spirit of collaboration and connected work that existed at Soulseek Records, but
with a wider appeal and better potential for growth and sustainability.
The 24hourcastle.com projects working towards the production of my cartoon were of
an especially composed variety. Participants were provided with lists of dialogue and
encouraged to submit their own performances of a dialogue entry of their choice. In addition,
visual content contributions were also solicited. Strict instructions were provided for the
generation of this content. This solicitation was not entirely successful, however, and I found
difficulty in finding participants. A remedy to this situation was found by obtaining permission
for manipulating unsolicited work, in taking the artwork shared on 24hourcastle.com and
transforming it into something for my own work.
One image I have used is Jay Harmon's Replusive
Creatures, an 8x11 marker drawing. When I first saw the
image I was struck by the sense of depth, and how the colors
seemed to make the image 'pop out'. Curious if I could take
this further, I decided to load the image into Adobe After
Effects and attempted to apply an effect that would make the
image function with 3D glasses.
Although that didn't work, what I did discover was that

Figure 1. Jay Harmon Repulsive
Creatures (2009) Illustration, Used with
permission.

I was able to distort and manipulate the image into interesting forms, an act of bricolage that
created something distinctly different for use in the animation. Upon obtaining Harmon's
permission to use the image, I continued experimenting with effects, and began to notice the
beginnings of a face. With that goal in mind, I wound up creating an entire character design,
the source of which was Harmon's Repulsive Creatures. Without that image, this design would
10

not exist. The reason I highlight this collaboration is that by having my work originate from the
work of another in this transformative fashion, I am in a position of allowing outside influence
to contribute to the unpredictability that is a central tenet of my work. This manipulation of
the work of other artists incorporates opportunities for collaboration with the Soulseek
Records model, providing it with a constant, minor activity to help maintain the attempts at
larger‐scale collaboration. Although in my completed animation, I did not end up using this
character design, this transformative activity highlights the potential of this methodology, and I
hope to take it further in future endeavors.

Figure 2. Alex Tripp Manipulation of
Repulsive Creatures (2009)
Animation.

Figure 3. Alex Tripp Character
Design from Manipulation (2009)
Illustration.

11

Feeling Bad For Laughing at the Grand Guignol
Of course, one of the other aspects that drew me to mention Soulseek Records is the
irony of a record label forming out of the P2P environment, an environment that has gained a
reputation for killing the music industry. I feel that any sort of critique of the music industry
that was presented by the non‐profit, democratic approach to Soulseek Records has only been
enhanced by the record industry's piracy situation. In my animated work, I strive to create an
environment that is simultaneously presenting subjects critically and comedically, with a focus
on violent imagery. This interest can be best put into context through an examination of the
Grand Guignol theater of Paris.
At the Grand Guignol theater, which operated from 1897 to 1962, "an evening’s
entertainment would consist of several plays interspersing trademark ‘horror’ drama with
comedies in the tradition of French social satire" (Hand 1). This type of theater has a
reputation for amoral content, as Frantisek Deák argues: "the negation of the moral aspects of
contemporary life are not deficiencies of the genre, merely part of its definition" (qtd. in Hand
4). In the article “The Grand‐Guignol: Aspects of Theory and Practice” by Richard Hand and
Michael Wilson, they rebut this:
The Grand‐Guignol frequently follows a traditional moral structure: the flawed
and hypocritical are punished; those who lived by the sword–or vitriol–get
slaughtered or maimed; the over‐reachers (those who have conducted unethical
scientific experiments or have had too much faith in technology or have
explored sadomasochism to excess) meet an appropriate nemesis [. . .]
Nevertheless in some plays destruction is meted out to the innocent and
undeserving. This is why we may reject Deák’s assertion that the Grand‐Guignol
12

is an amoral drama. A better definition is to interpret the Grand‐Guignol as
morally erratic, taking place in an indifferent universe where there is no justice
but definitely retribution, albeit far from divine. (Hand 4)
This is not to downplay the strength of the horror imagery that was presented within the walls
of the Grand Guignol, but merely to suggest that the morally erratic mode does have the
potential to evoke a critical approach to subjects of power and representation by presenting
the extremes of a message without the author coming from a too‐easily dismissed space of
proselytization.
For an example that does live up to the amorality associated with the Grand Guignol,
and which appears to have no positive potential for instigating change in its audience, we can
look to the web‐comic Electric Retard by the artist Sigvatr. The comic is presented with
primitive renderings of rape, murder, obsessions with fecal matter and semen, torture,
pedophilia, racism, and sexism. The presentation of this is taken to absurd degrees, with the
rituals of violence being quite elaborate and prolonged, and committed upon men, women,
and children. The comic’s violence is always performed by a white man, and not once is any
degree of punishment dealt to the wicked. Upon the Grand Guignol's closing in 1962, its
director Charles Nonon said, "We could never compete with Buchenwald. Before the war,
everyone believed that what happened on stage was purely imaginary; now we know that
these things‐‐and worse‐‐are possible" (Pierrion). Electric Retard addresses this problem by
including a giant, naked Hitler as a recurring character. This, I feel, is a better example of the
sort of amorality generally associated with the Grand Guignol Theater, and it is the antithesis
of what I want to accomplish in combining horror and comedy. Additionally, a community
exists around Electric Retard, encouraging others to create derivative works based upon the
13

template Sigvatr established. The maintenance of existing power roles and unrelenting
presentation of acts of violence as visual gags seems to encourage nothing more than nihilistic
thought in people privileged enough to have private Internet access. I believe such action is
grossly irresponsible.
Something contemporary from which I hope to take a more positive example is the
animated television program Xavier: Renegade Angel, created by Vernon Chatman and John
Lee. The show follows Xavier, a man covered in brown feathers with a beak for a nose and a
snake arm. Xavier wanders from town to town, encountering various stereotypical characters
who often greet him with the phrase "We don't take kindly to no freaks", and then beat him
senseless. Although the show is very loosely plotted and often goes off on tangents, the
general structure of an episode will find the stereotypical characters that are in power
revealing vulnerabilities or transgressive behavior, and a chain of events will eventually lead to
Xavier wreaking elaborate, large scale destruction which kills everyone he encounters in the
episode. Here, like in the Grand Guignol, an erratic morality is in effect. Although harm does
often fall upon the innocent, it is seldom that any character is not receiving some form of
punishment that alters the power structure. Through the layers of ironic representation, a
point of view of the world from Chatman and Lee is clear, and the viewer is potentially
encouraged to think critically about the power relationships they encounter and in which they
participate.
For the cartoon that accompanies this paper, I have created an experimental narrative
that works with the above ideas. The bulk of this narrative focuses on conversations between
two characters, discussing subjects such as the end of the world, global warming, and being an
“alien”. The anxieties that I experience regarding these subjects are exaggerated, and ideas
14

that could be presented in a way that have the potential to make a person feel powerless in
the real world, instead work to make a fictional world exciting or compelling. To accomplish
this, the work occupies a tenuous position between horror and comedy, wherein an audience
laughs, feels uncomfortable laughing, and wonders why this is. To return to my earlier point,
the relationship between the viewer and the artwork in the creation of meaning is key to this
research. By engaging the viewer’s sense of humor in the fashion of cognitive dissonance, I
hope to provoke the viewer to find a morally positive message to the work, in spite of its
violent or disturbing imagery.

15

Chapter 2: The Frenzy of the Possible
The history of animation is rife with contradiction: the medium is able to hint at an
unlimited ability to realize the imaginary, yet it is so quick to fall into consistency or trends to
enable its own production. Is it possible for animation to overcome this? In this chapter, I will
use philosopher Gilles Deleuze's concept of the virtual in conjunction with the idea of striated
space to examine how potential takes form in animation, and to explore avenues in which this
formation of potential can subvert the typical striation of the virtual that occurs.
So, the virtual. In Deleuze's essay on Bergsonian memory, he says “the virtual is not the
same thing as the possible: the reality of time is finally the affirmation of a virtuality that is
actualized, for which to be actualized is to invent. Because if everything is not given, it remains
that the virtual is the whole” (Deleuze 30). The virtual, then, is not merely the possible; it is the
entirety of duration. To say it can be striated is somewhat inaccurate. The virtual exists
outside of what is currently actualized; encompassing all that has been and will be actualized.
Rather, it is the way in which the virtual is actualized, our access to the virtual, that is striated.
Striation is best thought of in contrast to smooth space. The smooth space of a blank
page becomes striated with the introduction of inscription as “it introduces distinct
orientation” (Lamarre 155). The striation introduces a path; it gives a logic to linearity. When
applied to the virtual, setting boundaries around what is accessed, it is also establishing all of
the virtual that will not be accessed. What I intend to show is that, in an artistic medium, these
boundaries occur dependent upon the technical practices put to use within that medium.
For an example, we can look to animation. In the essay “The Animated Gay Utopia”
Alexander Stewart writes of various potentials in the techniques put to use in American

16

animation from the 1920s, and of the techniques that followed which left these potentials
inert. He cites Disney's first feature length film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937),
which featured painted, static backgrounds. Stewart compares this with Disney's short Oswald
cartoons of the late 1920s, in which the background elements were animated in the same way
as the foreground characters, capable of all sorts of motion. Of this change, Stewart says:
The graphic possibilities of Oswald’s fluid landscape has been converted into
a calcified storybook painting. The Seven Dwarves may move with an
elasticity similar to Oswald’s, but they have very different rules directing their
behavior. They have lost their ability to interact with their world as if it were
made of the same material as their own bodies; their world has become 'real'
while they remain caricatures. (Stewart par. 10)
The implications of this variation in technique extend beyond the material and into the virtual.
The new technique striates the virtual, masking but not hiding, making apparent the blocked
out areas of the virtual that were accessible with previous techniques.
So how then do these techniques come into play in the history of animation? What is
the process of their emergences and disappearances? For this, we must turn to Jean‐Louis
Comolli's essay “Machines of the Visible”. In this essay Comolli presents an hypothesis on the
implementation of technology in society's practices, perhaps best summed up in his citation of
Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet:
'Never', say Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet, 'is an arrangement‐combination
technological, indeed it is always the contrary. The tools always presuppose a
machine, and the machine is always social before it is technical. There is always
a social machine which selects or assigns the technical elements used. A tool,
17

an instrument, remains marginal or little used for as long as the social machine
or the collective arrangement‐combination capable of taking it in it's phylum
does not exist'. (Comolli 122)
Technology is an inert force in society until it is picked up by some sort of social machine. It is
as though the landscape of progress is littered with technology which remains discarded on the
ground until plucked up, only able to be a part of a progression when the social machine uses
the technology for its own advancement. Truly, this is a relationship in which technology is
fairly powerless in driving progress; it is merely something which enables progress.
Comolli explains this relationship in his essay through the example of the cinema. He
cites, among many other examples, the film industry's sudden standardization of a new type of
film stock around the year 1925, which necessitated changes to be made throughout the
production process:
As far as we know, it is not exactly within the logic of technology, nor within
that of the economics of the film industry (in the mid‐twenties already highly
structured and well‐equipped) to adopt (or impose) a new product which in
an initial moment poses more problems than the old and hence incurs the
expense of adaptation (modification of lighting systems, lenses, etc.) without
somewhere finding something to its advantage and profit. (Comolli 131)
The advantage, Comolli says, was in this new film stock's “gain in realism” (131). The increase
in realism offered by this film stock was not taken up by the cinematic apparatus immediately.
But even at the time of its use, the technological configuration was not equipped for the new
implementation. Here was a technology, lying in wait, until the social configuration found a
need for it, regardless of the other factors, exactly as Comolli described.
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Accordingly, animators have always had to base their products on the limitations of
technologies available. Each one striating the accessed virtual in their own way, demonstrating
through the technology they utilize, all of the potential circumstances they actively ignore.
This awareness of ignored potential is a central concern of my work, and further, is an
awareness familiar to others of my generation, who like me, grew up in what I will shortly
define as a “frenzy of the possible.”
Comolli brings up the idea that “the second half of the nineteenth century lives in a sort
of frenzy of the visible … the effect of the social multiplication of images: ever wider
distribution of illustrated papers, waves of prints, caricatures, etc.” (122). Simultaneous to this
expansion of visual technology, the world saw a number of “journies, explorations,
colonisations, the whole world becomes visible at the same time that it becomes
appropriatable” (Comolli 122). It was in this frenzy of the visible, this onslaught of new visual
information that the birth of cinema occurred. And it is from this frenzy that the “extreme
eagerness of the first spectators to recognize in the images of the first films – devoid of colour,
nuance, fidelity – the identical image, the double of life itself” (Comolli 124) came.
I propose that in the late twentieth and early twenty‐first centuries, we are
experiencing another frenzy in various artistic mediums, a frenzy of the possible. It is in this
frenzy that I was able, as a child with no technical knowledge, to experience reflexivity. It is in
this frenzy of various social configurations in which the striation of the accessed virtual can
occur, where knowledge of the plethora of styles that comes simply from viewing media from a
span of history makes apparent all of the forms of the virtual that individual styles ignore.
This frenzy of the possible, while demonstrating the limitations of previously
established styles, also suggests the potential for the creation of new styles, ones which will
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not have their striation of the virtual made so apparent, where the viewer won't experience
unintended reflexivity, where the viewer cannot be certain of what aspects of the virtual are
left out through striation until the end of the production. I am thinking in particular of Masaaki
Yuasa's 2004 animated film Mindgame. In this film, the production techniques used are never
constant for long. A character appears drawn and colored in one minute, and then composed
of a photographic image the next. Although the specific techniques on an individual level all
have their forbearers, this was my first experience seeing a work use hybridity in technique in
concert with the narrative, with the progressions of both serving to each other’s benefit.
In Mindgame, Yuasa's implementation of a variety of techniques, generally seen in
isolation from each other, is an excellent representative of the frenzy of the possible.
Technically, this approach is considered an instance of reflexivity due to the breaks in the
consistency of the reality that is presented. But the implementation of these techniques has
the opposite effect. The instance in which the character Nishi has changed from being a hand‐
drawn cartoon character to being represented as a photographed human occurs in a moment
of heightened emotion for the character. The love of his life has just told him that she is
marrying someone else, and the change in his being serves to enhance that moment and the
connection with Nishi. The frenzy of the possible is both acknowledged and tamed, with the
viewers' knowledge of all that can be in animation recognized, with intent put behind the
utilization of a different possibility. Rather than remind the viewer that they are watching a
film, it adds to the emotional depth of what that film can be.
In the time of Comolli's frenzy of the visible, the goal in mind was to find a
representation of reality which could be accepted as the double of life itself. As the cinema
progressed, a variety of insular realities were formed, and as they became digested in larger
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groups, the appearance of the striation of the accessed virtual, the things that simply could not
happen in the reality being presented became apparent. This has led to our current situation,
the frenzy of the possible, in which this awareness of what is ignored becomes all too clear.
The need for artists to acknowledge this glut of possibilities, to tame this frenzy by way of
utilizing the established visual vocabulary and settling realities which acknowledge the
potential of what they can be, is only growing. By utilizing co‐creative practices, this taming of
the frenzy of the possible is within the reach of so many artists. And as the frenzy of the visible
led to a believable representation of reality, the frenzy of the possible can lead to the creation
of realities capable of surprise, of eliciting excitement solely out of the fact of their existence.
The frenzy of the possible can lead to productions that don't broadcast their futures like the
old Saturday morning cartoon from my memories. It is by harnessing this frenzy that the
depths of multiplicity I wrote of in the introduction can be further explored.

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Chapter 3: Where does Super Mario go when he dies?
How is the frenzy of the possible tamed? Although my collaborations with others are
important in my work, equally important is my relationship to the tools used in the act of
making art. I take a collaborative approach in the utilization of technology. The output is a
negotiation between what the technology is capable of, what I initially envision, and my own
abilities to push the technology past its perceived limits. I see my lifelong practice of playing
video games as preparation extraordinaire for the artistic/technological collaborations in my
work. In this chapter, I intend to explain how. As such, the best demonstration of this is
through a reading of Super Mario Bros., a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) game released
in 1985. In what follows, as a visual example of the striation of the virtual, I explore the way
that conventional paths through the virtual in an artistic medium are established, and how
these conventions can be subverted. This example further illustrates an intuitive relationship
with technology in art making practices.
Super Mario Bros. is a fairly unforgiving game. It is of the platformer genre, in which the
players traverse a number of levels, running and jumping to navigate, until they reach the end
of the final castle, and find the princess. The game starts off with five lives, which allows for
five separate failures in a performance of the game, a failure either being killed by one of the
enemies that are scattered throughout the levels or falling into one of the environmental
obstacles. Although there are opportunities to increase the number of lives, it is easy for the
rate of failure to outpace this, with more deaths than increases in the number of lives available
to the player in a single game. This leads to a “game over” message, and the game must be
started again from the beginning. Over the years, this inability to progress in skill led to much

22

frustration in my attempts to master Super Mario Bros., and even though I began playing video
games at age five, I was unable to finish all the levels until the age of eighteen.
The only thing delaying my successful completion of the game during this time was my
own lack of patience. To successfully complete the game, I had to embrace the repetitions it
required of me, committing the maps of each level to memory. I used the term performance
earlier, and that is intentionally meant to evoke the idea of musical performance. A part of
what makes Super Mario Bros. worth noting compared to the games that preceded it, is its use
of one button to run. The accumulation of speed in the character's movements provide for a
great deal of nuance in successful play; much in the same way that the score of a musical
composition can be recognizable in spite of a performer amateurishly stumbling through it, a
level of Super Mario Bros. can also be completed with a similar awkwardness in gesture. Like
a music student practicing a piece of music, I practiced Mario, using the repetitions the game
imposed to refine my gestures, and to put to better use the concept of momentum in seeing
the levels through to completion.
This process is a focused attempt at developing intuition as this concept is understood
in Gilles Deleuze's essay “Bergson: 1859‐1941”. In this essay, two modes of memory are
established: recollection‐memory and contraction‐memory. Deleuze says of the latter that it is
the “essential one” to the topic of intuition and that in it “the past survives in itself” (Deleuze
29). Deleuze continues, stating:
The past does not have to survive psychologically, nor physiologically in our
brains, because it has not ceased to be, it has only ceased to be useful – it is; it
survives in itself […] If the past had to wait to be no more, if it were not
immediately past, “past in general”, it would never be able to become what it is,
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it would never be “this past”. The past is therefore the in‐itself, the unconscious,
or more precisely, as Bergson says, the virtual […] The past is not constituted
after it has been present; it coexists with itself as present. (Deleuze 29)
The way in which intuition utilizes the past is in a compacted form: the entirety of past
experience is stored within the moment of the present, thereby promoting an immediate
response to stimuli. Deleuze goes on to describe the past occupying the present in coexistent
degrees, saying of these degrees, that they are “simultaneously what makes duration
something virtual and what makes it so that duration nonetheless is actualized at every instant,
because they delineate so many planes and levels that determine all the possible lines of
differentiation” (Deleuze 30). In a moment of intuition, these divisions, carrying the difference
of separation and connection, play themselves out in some pasts being prioritized over other
pasts. That is why the development of my intuition as it facilitates my progress through Super
Mario Bros. is inextricably linked to which past I am drawing from.
For all the times I had attempted to play Super Mario Bros. but gave up, what prevented
me from acquiring the necessary skill to complete the game was a failure to adjust my intuition
accordingly. Some aspects of what I required fell under recollection‐memory, where I needed
to be able to access the composition of whichever level I was playing, but I never had the maps
committed to memory. Rather, what was necessary was to develop a sense of expectation. In
the game a number of the platforms a player runs and jumps across are brown boxes, which if
struck from the bottom, can produce items, or “power‐ups”, to ease in the completion of the
game. I am never able to recall the specific locations of many of the boxes that contain items.
But the arrangements of boxes tend to hint at where a power‐up may be located, and what I

24

learn is a sense of where a power‐up should be based on the composition of the level and the
level's relative placement in the game. This process is a fully intuitive one.
Some of the adjustment in intuition involved the conscious decision to stop relying on
experience I had outside of the game, as it was actively detrimental to my performance. For
instance, when running through a level, with the next slivers of the composition revealing
themselves on the right side of the screen, the player will be confronted with enemies in fixed
positions who shoot fireballs or throw hammers that can result in death, and between the time
when the enemies are first spotted to the time that they are reached, a decision about how to
progress must be made. My intuition regarding what I should do when faced with these
immobile enemies was to stop and allow myself more time to observe the pattern of their
movements, and then initiate the correct move when the time was right. However, this
actually led to countless failures. After some time, I discovered that the large majority of these
immobile enemies' patterns were set in a way that the perfect window of time to approach
them was always available when they were approached at full speed, without any momentum
sacrificed through giving the action further consideration. This adjustment of intuition to the
internal logic of the game was difficult, but necessary in learning to perform the game in the
manner it demanded.
Importantly, as an artist, I put this intuitive relationship with technology into practice.
The artist can substitute the final destination of Super Mario Bros. with the goal of production
at the end of an artmaking practice. In this way, the artist sets the conditions for their own
game, drawing from prior applications of technology to simultaneously create a range of
artistic performances, and all of the traps and potential deaths that result in a failure to
achieve the desired production. With practice, the gestures required in operating pen, mouse,
25

or whichever instrument is in use become embodied, and the intuition surrounding the tool's
implementation is guided. The artist is able to avoid these deaths, and achieve their goal.
For better or for worse, making art is not as strict and unforgiving as Super Mario Bros.
The artist is not sent back to the beginning by an external force when they encounter a death;
in fact, they may not even be aware of it, and complete the work without knowing of the
failure that undermines their goal. Discipline and an awareness of these metaphorical deaths
in artmaking is required for the intuitive relationship to produce the desired results, like the
adjusted intuition I needed for my performance of Super Mario Bros. Within art this manifests
through the adherence to conceptual frameworks, such as the twelve principles of animation
laid out by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston in their classic text The Illusion of Life. But in some
scenarios, the terms by which an artist sets their work as living or dying are impractical. An
artist is fully capable of working within a conceptual framework that demands more resources
than they have to offer, ensuring that the process of their work accumulates unavoidable
deaths, setting up their work for inherent inferiority against whatever has already set the
terms of the game.
I have encountered an inherent inferiority like this in playing Super Mario Bros. by
comparing my performances to those of the "speed run" community on the Internet. A speed
run is a recording of a game with the goal of having the shortest duration of play possible. The
community often uses computer assistance to achieve these goals, using software to repeat
every single gesture until the absolute optimum one is recorded, and to perform gestures
which are nearly impossible to attain with hand and controller, using the programming of the
game to navigate levels in ways that subverts their composition. I am not intending to
denigrate the talents of the speed runners. I am merely pointing out that they have resources I
26

do not have when playing the game on a console. If I'm playing their game, I am going to lose.
I will return to this idea momentarily.
One thing that never crosses my mind when playing Super Mario Bros. is the question of
where Mario goes after he dies. The strict discipline of the game insists that the player repeats
the attempt that led to the failure. But this question of "where an artwork goes when it dies”
is important in circumventing the inherent inferiority I mentioned above. In Super Mario Bros.,
death occurs due to a failure of acting out the gestures that the game demanded. Death in the
artistic‐technological collaboration is the same, a failure to act out the gestures that the
conceptual framework demands from the artist. But rather than viewing a position as death, it
can just as easily be reconfigured into an alternate pathway that finds an entirely new goal. Or
the terms of the approach can themselves be changed, and the conditions of embodiment
within this game can be altered to better suit achieving the desired results.
The other part of this equation is in the idea of a transformation of death/failure within
a technological collaboration, which can be explained through the glitch aesthetic. In Iman
Moradi's dissertation Glitch Aesthetics he explains that through the experience of visual
phenomenon of the "pure glitch", or visual content produced by "malfunction or error", artists
have been inspired to either present these glitches as ready‐mades or to deliberately use these
glitches or replications as a "glitch‐alike", intentionally positioned in a composition (Moradi 9‐
10). In these instances, the artist is allowing for the design of the engineers, programmers, and
designers of the software they are using to shape their work. And they are doing so in a way
that takes a death in technological collaboration, a failure to represent under the artists'
standards: "Glitch artists either synthesise glitches in non‐digital mediums, or produce and
create the environment that is required to invoke a glitch and anticipate one to happen..."
27

(Moradi 10). In other words, they either completely reposition their goal, putting their path
through this failure, or take the failure out into a different context in which it becomes a
success.
A further influence in my thinking both about playing Super Mario Bros. as technological
collaboration and about the idea of the glitch is the Super Mario Movie, a hacked video game
from Cory Archangel and the artist collective Paperrad. Using the process of ROM hacking, in
which the data of a videogame is altered to produce new results, they transformed the Super
Mario Bros. game into their own narrative work, telling the story of Mario attempting to
navigate his world after it has undergone twenty years of decay. This story sets up the terms
of their collaboration with the Super Mario Bros. ROM and the technology they use to edit it.
They maintain the familiarity of the imagery of the game, but represent this imagery with the
variety of possible configurations afforded by alterations to the programming, graphics and
sound, bringing the technical limitations of each to the forefront. The idea of decay in the
narrative comes out in the glitches that are applied to the aesthetic, with colors shifted, text
displayed incorrectly, and transitional sequences that bring the visual content to a similar level
of abstraction as can be achieved by a malfunctioning NES game.
In the Super Mario Movie, a relationship occurs between artists and technology
wherein the implementation of technology is absolutely deliberate. Here, an idiosyncratic
aesthetic is crafted with a dynamic and intentional use of the glitch and the limitations of the
tool, the influence of both being essential to the meaning of the work. The visual cues of a
failure of representation in the standard playback of a videogame ‐ the visual glitches that
informed the player that their machine was malfunctioning ‐ are treated as a path to

28

expressing ideas around the concept of decay, in ways that could not be expressed with a
flawless system.
When I approach a technological collaboration, I try to keep in mind the strengths of
the awareness and utilization of technological failure and limits that were exhibited in the
Super Mario Movie. The opening scene of my thesis project Pratfall Origarch, a short
experimental narrative animation, is a simple, black and white hand‐drawn animation of the
main character struggling to open a can before slicing his finger off. When watching Internet
video, a "choppiness" can occur, with the video stuttering at an inconsistent frame‐rate. I
decided that for this scene, I would use this glitch in streaming playback intentionally, drawing
out the frames of animation with the idea that they would be played back at an inconsistent
frame rate. This created a variable fluidity, which I put into effect to augment the action being
depicted, to make the abrupt changes in flow a key part of the character's acting. Frames for
certain poses hang on the screen for a few split seconds before the stream of frames regains its
flow, in a way that helps to further depict the struggle of opening the can, as opposed to being
something which disrupts the depiction of this action.
In Super Mario Bros., there are three separate states of being for Mario, beginning with
the smallest and weakest state, then growing larger, and then finally gaining the ability to
shoot fireballs. This is not the alteration of the conditions of embodiment that I mentioned
earlier, however, as the items that allow for these altered states are a part of the composition
of the level. The game is designed to be played with these abilities. But what if Mario didn't
have to be Mario? What if he could be embodied in the game with entirely different
conditions for existence, with a different sort of jump, or maybe no jump at all? The approach
to the composition would change entirely. And in the conceptual frameworks through which
29

artworks are realized, artists embody themselves through the tools they use. So what I am
arguing for here is a hybrid approach to the use of technology, as a form of a conceptual glitch.
This other aspect of hybridity, a fragmentation in the conceptual framework, supports my goals
of surprise and selective incoherence.
Earlier, I mentioned Thomas and Johnston’s twelve principles of animation in The
Illusion of Life. In my own work, the conceptual glitch that I am bringing about to enable my
hybrid approach to technology is connected to one of these principles, solid drawing. Solid, in
the sense that the Thomas and Johnston intend, means “good”: “Signs were hung on many
walls where the young trainees would be sure to see them, and the one we remember best
was this: ‘Does your drawing have weight, depth and balance?’ ‐ a casual reminder of the
basics of solid three‐dimensional drawing” (Thomas and Johnston 67). What I am proposing is
that one doesn’t need good drawings for good animation. The artists of the past who followed
the twelve principles have created tremendous work, and artists in the future will do the same.
I am by no means arguing against the validity of such pursuits. But if I were to attempt to
match the work that most exemplifies this principle, the inherent inferiority that I mentioned
with the online speed run community would rear its head again. I would be set in competition
against agencies with resources I do not have, who are able to invest the time of numerous
people in the production of work. So rather than trying to compete with good solid drawings, I
can work on a parallel plane, using “bad” drawings.
Now, using bad drawings on their own does not help this inferiority; in fact this would
only serve to aggravate the rift. But by using bad drawings in character animation, although
still retaining theatrical expressive abilities, the idea of the character as a real person who
exists within 3D space is subverted. By Thomas and Johnston's standards, this is a failure of
30

representation, an unmistakable death in the conceptual composition of a good animation:
"The audiences will make our little cartoon character sad ‐ actually, far sadder than we could
ever draw him ‐ because in their minds, the character is real" (Thomas and Johnston 20). So if
the character is not real, it is held back from a full emotional connection with the audience.
This is where hybridity becomes crucial. If the audience is made aware that a character
is a drawing, then the audience is capable of accepting the greater variety in the qualities of
drawing, in quality of line, and dynamic proportions. They are also more willing to accept the
character as a videogame sprite, or a clay figure, or some alternate form of representation.
These behaviors are unacceptable from the cartoon characters that are supposed to be real
people. What I am attempting in my thesis project is to regain any ground lost in emotional
expressiveness of characters through the use of bad drawings, and to get the expressiveness to
occur from the technical conditions of the character's representations.
To some extent, this process of hybridity runs counter to the idea of an intuition‐driven
collaboration with technology. My intuition‐driven relationship with Super Mario Bros. is at
such a level that I can carry on conversations and not even really think about my actions, and
still perform well. In fact, I gave a presentation on an early form of the ideas within this essay
while playing Super Mario Bros., and successfully beat the game. But in fact, I actively seek to
avoid this level of intuition‐led action in my artistic practice. My relationship with technology
requires intuition, but includes knowing when to refrain from relying solely on intuition.
In my thesis project, Mario comes into play directly in one of my own attempts at ROM
hacking. I hacked into the Super Mario World ROM image for the Super Nintendo
Entertainment System, and altered the visual data of the game so that Mario's head was
replaced with my own character's. Then, using the emulation software SNES9x, I disabled the
31

various layers of visual data until only the character remained, with a solid blue background
behind him. The reason for limiting this implementation of ROM hacking is simple: the process
is incredibly frustrating.
The visual data of a ROM is broken up into eight‐by‐eight pixel tiles. For the entire
collection of tiles, only eight colors are available. Each tile is assigned its own palette, enabling
each of those eight colors to represent any of the colors the system is capable of producing.
Without doing a great deal of research into how the video game uses each tile (for instance, a
blank tile could have numerous iterations across a screen), using this process to compose a
specific image requires a great deal of trial and error. The intended image could in fact be
impossible to realize without making compromises for the game's method of tile assembly. I
could actually embrace the glitch here, filling in any sort of data to replace whatever needed
replacing with no regard as to how the tiles are re‐compiled. The time requirement to adjust
to the learning curve of the process is too daunting, and becoming an expert in minute details
with no outside applicability seems too impractical an activity.
And so, facing a prospect of constant death similar to the one I faced in Super Mario
Bros. before I had learned the game, I chose to redefine the terms of technological
implementations in my own work. It was enough that the extent of my video game hacking
was to represent the movements of my character with the movements of Mario. Representing
an environment under the same video game‐based conditions as the character was something
I found appealing, but the time required to achieve that level of ability was outside of my
resources during the two‐year Masters degree for which my project and this paper were
prepared. For my purposes, it is acceptable to implement technologies which will more easily
produce what I desire.
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Conclusion
In this essay I have attempted to contribute to a critical understanding of hybrid
practices in the production of art. This research is by no means definitive; I have only begun to
scratch the surface and hope others will join me in taking this knowledge further.
As the means for production of animation become more widely accessible the number
of solo practitioners who take up the technologies discussed will likewise increase. These
artists will not be content to create work that is simply an inferior version of what already
exists, at least not all of them. For those with a desire to create work that not only engages
technological innovation in the field, but is capable of generating experience able to speak to
the contemporary imaginary, I believe I have established a method towards achieving this goal
through the specific approaches to technology and intuition that I have outlined. I will in my
own practice continue to push at these limits, and anticipate other collaborators who will also
seek to defeat conventional expectations that have to a large degree defined past animation
practices.

33

Works Cited
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Press, 1980.
Day, David. "M.I.A ‐ Arular". Dusted Magazine. Dusted Magazine, 7 Feb 2005. Web. 3 Dec
2009.
Deleuze, Gilles. “Bergson, 1859‐1941.” Desert Islands and Other Texts 1953‐1974. New York:
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Disney, Walt, producer. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Walt Disney Productions. 1937.
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Stewart, Alexander. “The Animated Gay Utopia.” December 2007. Gay Utopia: A Symposium
on Sex and the Future. <http://gayutopia.blogspot.com/2007/12/alexander‐stewart‐a
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Sturken, Marita and Lisa Cartwright. Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture.
New York: Oxford, 2005. Print.
Super Mario Bros.. Dir. Shigeru Miyamoto. Nintendo, 1985. NES Video Game.
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Timpanelli, Matthew. Soulseekrecords.org. Soulseek Records. Web. 04 Dec 2009.
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Iwerks. Walt Disney Video, 2007. DVD.

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Works Consulted
Deleuze, Gilles and Guatarri, Felix. A Thousand Plateaus. Minneapolis, MN: University of
Minnesota Press, 1987.
Gondry, Michel. You'll Like This Film Because You're In It. New York: PictureBox, 2008.
Leong, David. “Mindgame: Anime for the 21st Century”. KFC Cinema. (1 Jul. 2005). 30 Dec.
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mindgame.html>

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Appendix
Accompanying this written thesis is a Blu‐Ray disc containing my cartoon Pratfall
Origarch. The cartoon can also be found on the Internet at http://www.alextripp.com.

37