Last weekend, I attended the abstract animation competition segment at LIAF. It was my first time participating in an animation festival, and it felt truly wondrous and unforgettable. While I can’t claim to have understood every animation, there were certainly some that left a profound impression on me.

In abstract animation, you rarely see fully formed characters. Instead, they are often portrayed using lines to outline their edges or blocks of color to convey their forms. One work that left a deep impression on me was “Vision.” The creator believes that eyes are magical spheres that constitute dreams and preserve memories. In this piece, against a white background, the artist used lines to depict eyes continuously colliding and merging. They conveyed the idea that “new worlds come to be when our gazes meet.”

“Beardiful Tone” is also one of my favorite animations. It’s a very interesting piece where the creator used their own shaved beard, synchronized with background music, to create a swaying and playful work.

However, one of the most challenging pieces for me to understand was “The Artist in the Machine.” This is an “animation” entirely produced by a self-learning artificial intelligence. I’m sorry, but I really couldn’t grasp the meaning of this piece. Even the description only asks, “What happens when an AI is entrusted with the creation of art?” I couldn’t discern the creator’s intentions, or perhaps I couldn’t resonate with them. In any case, it left me feeling quite uncomfortable!