Episode 154 - World of Tomorrow (Don Hertzfeldt, 2015-2020) (with Elizabeth Cox)
World of Tomorrow (Don Hertzfeldt, 2015-2020).
The Fantasy/Animation podcast takes listeners on a journey through the intersection between fantasy cinema and the medium of animation. Available via Apple Podcasts, Spotify and many of your favourite podcast hosting platforms!
For Fantasy/Animation’s very first look at California-born animator, writer, and independent filmmaker Don Hertzfeldt, Chris and Alex are joined by Elizabeth Cox, founder of independent animation studio Should We Studio, to discuss Hertzfeldt’s influential World of Tomorrow (2015-2020) featuring the tribulations of protagonist Emily. In her role as the Senior Editorial Producer at TED-Ed, Elizabeth has written and edited the scripts for over 200 educational animated videos including “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster," a seven-part adaptation of the book by Bill Gates (supported by Gates Ventures). She also served as a science advisor on “My Love Affair With Marriage,” an animated feature film that premiered at Tribeca Festival 2021. Elizabeth recently wrote a short piece for the blog on her animated series Ada, with each episode exploring how a different technology or policy could shape the future. Topics for this episode include World of Tomorrow’s distinct visual style and how underneath the series’ array of hand-drawn stick figures and visual simplicity lies the staging of complex philosophical reflections; absurdist humour and links between Hertzfeldt and experimental filmmakers like David Lynch and Stan Brakhage; histories of “useful” animation and the medium’s longstanding relationship to education; the contribution of art to science in the use of metaphor, humour, and analogy; and what the experimental storytelling style of World of Tomorrow has to say about the flattening of time and the malleability of memory.
**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**
**As featured on Feedspot’s 25 Best London Education Podcasts**
Suggested Readings
Cook, Malcolm, Michael Cowan, and Scott Curtis. 2018. "Useful Animation: Iconography, Infrastructure and Impact." animation: an interdisciplinary journal 18, no. 3: 196–226.
Hosea, Birgitta. 2010. “Drawing Animation.” animation: an interdisciplinary journal 5, no. 3: 353–367.
Faber, Liz W. 2020. The Computer’s Voice: From Star Trek to Siri. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.