eroticism of the eye is seen as a superficial Hollywood film full of fake explosions, etruded aliens and rogue nebulae. In short, special FXs are associated with cartoonish hypnotism, commercial mind manipulation, and masturbatory immaturity. Yet I am here to argue (as clearly as I can) why compositing softwares, which are behind many of the world’s most glitzy motion graphic campaigns, deserve recognition as precursors to a truly digital21st century word processor. Why are the glitz and glam not mere effervescent by-products of puerile imaginations incapable of really grasping the crucial role of abstraction in an information economy (or the primacy of a self-reflexive materiality in art practice)? Because (to put it simply), occasionally motion graphics are also the expression of the deepest felt sentiments experienced by any of us. Surfaces contain concepts. Naïve aesthetics play a nourishing role in the evolution of representation. Discourse must be built around even excluded or marginal (dynamic visual typography and poetic) practices. John Berger, in his 1976 essay The Primitive and The Professional, insightfully suggests that conventions and cultural class systems distinguish between the professional and primitive artist. The professional, trained and articulate, approaches art with the idiom of academia. The primitive arrives at art later in life, crudely, as a means of expressing lived experience. The resistance and ridicule met by primitive artists is due to the turbulent protective reflexes of the dominant professional caste whose definitions of what constitutes correct aesthetic goals define a carefully-guarded commercially-viable field of discourse and practise. My argument for the relevance of compositing to writing is (in some respects) an appeal for the inclusion of digital primitives, the basement of gloss, exuberant home-brew authors expressing their poetic instincts with contemporary motion graphic tools. Ancient History: George Meliés and the Heel of Time One of the first overviews of kinetic typography in book form, Bellantoni and Woolman’s
eroticism of the eye is seen as a superficial Hollywood film full of fake explosions, etruded aliens and rogue nebulae. In short, special FXs are associated with cartoonish hypnotism, commercial mind manipulation, and masturbatory immaturity. Yet I am here to argue (as clearly as I can) why compositing softwares, which are behind many of the world’s most glitzy motion graphic campaigns, deserve recognition as precursors to a truly digital21st century word processor. Why are the glitz and glam not mere effervescent by-products of puerile imaginations incapable of really grasping the crucial role of abstraction in an information economy (or the primacy of a self-reflexive materiality in art practice)? Because (to put it simply), occasionally motion graphics are also the expression of the deepest felt sentiments experienced by any of us. Surfaces contain concepts. Naïve aesthetics play a nourishing role in the evolution of representation. Discourse must be built around even excluded or marginal (dynamic visual typography and poetic) practices. John Berger, in his 1976 essay The Primitive and The Professional, insightfully suggests that conventions and cultural class systems distinguish between the professional and primitive artist. The professional, trained and articulate, approaches art with the idiom of academia. The primitive arrives at art later in life, crudely, as a means of expressing lived experience. The resistance and ridicule met by primitive artists is due to the turbulent protective reflexes of the dominant professional caste whose definitions of what constitutes correct aesthetic goals define a carefully-guarded commercially-viable field of discourse and practise. My argument for the relevance of compositing to writing is (in some respects) an appeal for the inclusion of digital primitives, the basement of gloss, exuberant home-brew authors expressing their poetic instincts with contemporary motion graphic tools. Ancient History: George Meliés and the Heel of Time One of the first overviews of kinetic typography in book form, Bellantoni and Woolman’s