Animated Landscapes: History, Form and Function by

Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2015-08-27T04:00:00+00:00

9

Off the Rails: Animating Train Journeys

Birgitta Hosea

In 2012 the average resident of the UK spent 361 hours travelling a total of 6,691 miles. Of this travel, 11 per cent was done by public transport.1 During their travels, the experience that these average residents have of landscape is in movement, of passing through places before arriving at their final destination. This is an important point to stress, as the mobility paradigm in urban geography and sociology proposes that cities and society can be studied in terms of travel rather than stasis – through the movement of peoples, resources, data, finance – in order to better understand the formation of identity, ideology, power and society.

In accord with these ideas about mobility, this chapter will focus on animations that move between locations and are concerned with trajectory and locomotion rather than landscape as a static entity. After considering the connections between early cinema and the train, we will examine a body of works that are all thematically linked through their association with animated train journeys, although the individual pieces of work may take different forms – from pre-filmic moving panoramas, to phantom rides, to Ivor the Engine, Thomas the Tank Engine, Madame Tutli-Putli, transport information films, post-filmic subway zoetropes and railway simulation games. Through a discussion of diverse approaches to animated – and animating – train journeys, this chapter will explore the implications of the mobility paradigm in urban geography for animation, not just in terms of visual content or subject matter, but in terms of animation as a concept and the politics of animation.

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