.....Reflexivity is perhaps the most essential impulse in both classic and contemporary experimental animation. After all, animation is the after image of material truth and chimerical optics: single frames in rapid succession fuse into a kinetic illusion made in the mind's eye. While frame by frame construction is the obscure basis of most filmmaking, it is a conscious activity to the animator, who crafts each still frame as a fraction of cinematic time. Perhaps this heightened awareness of process can explain why self-referentiality surfaces as a perennial subject in animation. The history of studio production recalls the pre-modern painter's quest to acheive realistic perspective. Through invention such as the rotoscope, the cel process, and digital modeling, animation erased its own traces and evolved as a fantastic imitation of life.....
Robert Breer suggests: "....time doesn't move forward, things are going, but sideways, obliquely, down and backwards, not necessarily ahead. The sense of motion is the issue. That idea seems hard to define, because our locomotion drives us forward with our faces looking at new things. But since that movement is toward oblivion, in my philosophy anyhow, it might well be backward. It's a delusion to think you are getting anywhere."
