Animation Between Magic, Miracles And Mechanics

Beskrivelse

Images have long been seen as more than just pictures-they hold the potential to come alive. This book dives into how magic, miracles, and mechanics powered animation in the Middle Ages, exploring the idea of living images through a medieval lens.

Exploring the magical and mechanical forces behind animated images in medieval times.

We are all, in a sense, animists when it comes to images, instinctively sensing that they can be alive or come to life. Today, this feeling is often explained away as a simple projection occurring between the viewer and the image. But during the Middle Ages, images embraced animation through magical, miraculous, and mechanical methods, energized by both natural and supernatural life forces.

This book takes a deep look at how magic, miracles, and mechanics served as engines of animation, aiming to understand living images by connecting with medieval experiences rather than dismissing them. Effigies were believed to bleed, weep, or even lactate, whether through divine power or hydraulic devices.

Statues could move or speak, acting as demonic oracles or using hidden speaking tubes to produce voices. Marvels created by magic or miracles were considered as real as mechanical wonders that physically moved matter. To truly grasp these fluid realities, we need to observe and listen carefully-especially when they challenge our usual way of thinking.

While animation was often debated and questioned, even its toughest critics acknowledged that gods and demons could animate inanimate objects, make them speak, and cause them to exude the fluids of life.

Yderligere information