Yeats, Joyce and Animation’s Field of Transformations.
Abstract: Through an analysis of Tim Booth’s short films, this paper will discuss the potential for the animated form to embody Keiji Nishitani’s ‘field of transformations’. His films The Prisoner (1983) and Ulys (2000), adaptations of Yeats’ The Lake Isle of Inisfree and Joyce’s Ulysses respectively, mark moments of rupture in Irish culture and identity, and through a use of the plasmatic animated image, describe both the animated text’s relationship to literary sources and the contingent nature of language, history and identity itself.
Biographical Statement: Thomas Walsh graduated from the Diploma in Animation Production Course at Ballyfermot Senior College in 1994, and worked as a Special Effects artist for Screen Animation Ireland on the feature productions The Pebble and the Penguin (1994) and All Dogs go to Heaven II (1995), and afterwards for the Walt Disney Feature Animation Studio on The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), Hercules (1997) and Tarzan (1999). He has recently completed a PhD on the relationship between a contemporary Irish animation industry and postcolonialism at Loughborough University School of Art and Design, and has contributed an article on special effects animation in Paul Wells’ book Fundamentals of Animation (2006). Ongoing research creates critical linkages between animation practice and formations of national and personal identity arising from postcolonial studies.
He is currently a Senior Lecturer on the BA (Hons) Animation degree course at the Arts University College at Bournemouth in the UK.