Animated Arts & Media
The Animated Arts and Media Research Group at the Institute of Film and Animation of Volda University College contains a spectrum of investigative and reflective practices, methods, and concepts that are anchored in and around animation and its connections with other disciplines.
The research group is connected to the department of Animation and will work on both smaller and larger research and develpment projects in collaboration between different intenral and external research groups, research labs, universities and the industry. The projects will be disseminated through publications, conference presentations, symposiums, and art-based forms of communication.
Research Projects
THE NORDIC ANIMATION SYMPOSIUMSince 2020 the research group has in collaboration with Fredrikstad Animation Festival (FAF) arranged a yearly symposium disseminating animation research to a wider audience. For the symposium of 2024 and 2025 we have made a partnership with The Animation Workshop (VIA University), The Danish Film School and Uppsala University’s department of Game Design and received support from the Nordic Culture Fund to develop the symposium: to expand the program, strengthen the quality and widen the scope. In addition to the 2 hours talk and panel discussion that until now has been the symposium format, there will now also be exhibitions and live event presenting artistic research at the Fredrikstad festival, there will be smaller research event at the partner institutions, the symposium activities will be documented on a webpage, the organization behind the symposium will be strengthen and the symposium activities should lead to regional collaboration that result in further research projects and dissemination. This project will make the Nordic Animation Symposium the main meeting place between animation researchers, industry and audiences in the region. |
 | Animation-making inside Virtual RealityToday, Virtual Reality applications such as Quill by Smoothstep and AnimVR provide users with immersive spaces of creation, generating unprecedented workflows, styles, and aesthetics. Allowing users to animate inside immersive three-dimensional spaces using intuitive techniques that are unique to the medium of VR, these applications stimulate novelty and new forms of collaborative animation-making. This research project looks at the unique features of these techniques of animating in VR. Thereby, current and future trends and possibilities of this new medium of animation-making are explored. |
| Visual Music UnderstandingLearning about musical concepts or how to play an instrument does to an increasing degree take place through audio visual media. How can the artistic tradition of visual music benefit this communication? This is an artistic research project that produce works that suggest potentials and directions in this development, while also criticising or commenting on it. The project has its base in the field of visual music film, traditionally understood as films that produces shapes, colours and movement analogue to musical form, and the output will consist mainly of short, animated films. While mostly focusing on the didactic potential of visual music the project does necessarily also engage in what I do think is the core questions of the field: is there a universal language of art, is there a unifying structure of aesthetics and meaning under the surface of music and visual art. and is this structure derived from nature or from the human brain? |
| Scandinavian Language Animation TextbookAnimation has become a greater part of Scandinavian primary and high school education the last 20 years, Still the access to Scandinavian language texts about the subject matter is limited. Through the Nordic Animation Research Network we work on an anthology directed at teachers who teach animation as part of their curriculum. The book will focus on theoretical and historical perspectives, to strengthen the teachers animation literacy. With the project we do also wish to contribute to the general development of Scandinavian language animation literature and vocabulary. |
Team
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M. Javad Khajavi (Assoc. Professor)Head of the Research Group | Trygve Nielsen (Ph.D. candidate)Member / Secretary | Endre Eidså Larsen (Assoc. Professor)Member | ||||||||
Email: khajavi@hivolda.no Website: https://www.javadkhajavi.com/
Research Interests: Animation in Design, Animation in Virtual Reality, Animation in Game, Animation and Technology, AI and ML in Animation
I am an award-winning multi-disciplinary designer, animator, developer, and researcher who works at the intersection of art, design and technology. I made my first animation by writing a computer code in 1995 at the age of ten, and have been interested in the intersection of art and tech since then. I am a tech-savvy whose works span several disciplines including 2D and 3D animation, game technology, and virtual reality. Currently I teach and research as an Associate Professor at Volda University College in Norway. Previously I was an Assistant Professor at the National University of Ireland Maynooth. I graduated from Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore with a PhD in Media Arts + Design in 2017. I am deeply invested in interdisciplinary research approaches that are informed by practice-oriented research, design thinking, and analytical methods and tools in Engineering. | Research fellow at Volda University College (Institute of Film and Animation) and student at The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (PhD Program of Artistic Research) Email: trygve.selnes.nielsen@hivolda.no Website: Research Interests: My main research focus is the connection between animation and music. I explore this by engaging in the artistic tradition of visual music and investigating the different links science and philosophy has made between sound and vision. As part of this i am also interested in the development of animation and music technology, the potential in both the brand new and the old and disregarded media, and I aim to exercise a critical and subversive approach to both. My research is mainly done in or through the arts. Besides this I do also take interest in documentary film theory, philosophical perspectives on film e.g. from psychoanalysis and critical theory, early animation history, esoteric music theory and comics. | Email: endre.eidsa.larsen@hivolda.no Website:
Research Interests: I am a film scholar with a particular interest in the aesthetics of film, animation and moving images. At the moment, I work on a phenomenological conception of film style and styles of animation. Recently, I finished my Ph.D. thesis on a so-called figural approach to film and film analysis. This is an approach that explores film’s potential as an inventive art of the visible that creates new appearances in the world, and affect our perception of the world. My present work on style is a continuation of this work, and is very much inspired by the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. A key concern is how styles of film and animation influence our attention. Further research interests include close analysis, theories and philosophies of film and animation, interconnections between aesthetics and ethics, montage, and the genre of horror.
Endre Eidsaa Larsen is an Associate Professor in Film and Animation Studies at Volda University College. Endre teaches film and animation history, theory and analysis, and centers his research on questions of aesthetics, style and perception. In 2021, he finished his Ph.D. with the thesis Figures of Cinema: A Figural Approach to Film and Film Analysis (Larsen, 2021). |
Supporters and Collaborators
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Grants and Financial Supports
| 6 | 615.598,0 | NOK | |
| Grants Applied | Financial support received |
| 2024 | Nordic Culture FundNordisk Kulturfond, Denmark (180.000 DKK) Project funding for collaborations accross the Nordic region |
| 2023 | SAS Events FundSociety for Animation Studies, US (1000 USD) |
| 2023 | Nordic Culture FundNordisk Kulturfond, Denmark (25000 DKK) The Expansion of the Nordic Animation Research Network (NARN). |
| 2022 | SAS Events FundSociety for Animation Studies, US (2000 USD) Organizing a gathering of animation researchers in the Nordic region. |
| 2022 | Seed Funding for Research InitiativesResearch & Development Board, HVO, Norway (50,000 NOK) Establishing the Nordic Animation Research Network (NARN). I was one of the founders of the research network and the primary investigator on this project. |
Publications
will be added soon
Conferences
Khajavi, M. J. (2023), “Charting the Animation Evolution: Artificial Intelligence, Spatial Computing, and the Metaverse”, International Conference on Advanced Imagery, Beijing Film Academy, Beijing, China, November 28, 2023.
Khajavi, M. J. (2023), “Animation Production and Spatial Computing”, Immersive Tech Week, VRDays Foundation, Rotterdam, December 1, 2023.
Khajavi, M. J. & Sheikh, B. (2023), “Automating Animated Typography Through an Online Web Application System”, Seventeenth International Conference on Design Principles & Practices, Lisbon Polytechnic, Lisbon, Portugal, March 29 - 31.
Khajavi, M. J. (2023), “The Meta-versed Animator: A Future of Immersive Animation-making inside Virtual Reality”, Reclaiming the Metaverse Symposium, Bergen, Norway, 14 April.
Khajavi, M. J. (2022), “The Influence of Place Illusion (PI) and the Sense of Presence on Immersive Animation-making inside Virtual Reality”, Researching Animation Symposium, Fredrikstad, Norway, 20 October.
Khajavi, M. J. (2022), “Animation, VR, and the Metaverse: Immersive Animation-making inside Virtual Reality”, keynote speech at the 33rd International Conference on the Society for Animation Studies, Teesside University, Middlesbrough, UK, 27 June.
Kim, Ye Eun, 2022, User-focused Storytelling for Virtual Reality: Strategies for Designing the Viewer's Role and Identity, the 33rd Annual Conference of the Society for Animation Studies, Teesside University, UK
Khajavi, M. J. (2021), “Rethinking Practice-oriented Research in Creative and Media Arts with Reference to Research Models and RTD Practices in the Animation and Game Industries”, Artistic Research Symposium, Volda University College, Volda, Norway, 12 November.