Technological Animation in Classical Antiquity

Abstract

The desire to animate inanimate objects has been a recurring theme in European culture dating back to Greco-Roman times. This volume aims to establish, for the first time, the significance of this aspiration and its practical realization within Greek and Roman societies. While certain aspects have been explored previously, such as the role of automata in myth or their use in philosophical thought experiments, this study places technological animation as a phenomenon front and centre by examining technological devices across various media and their roles in diverse contexts. The study delves into the reciprocal relationship between technological and material realities, investigating how they influenced the concept of animation and vice versa—a cultural dialogue that has long been neglected. Foregrounding technological animation not only provides a new understanding of the processes behind animation, but also lends a fresh perspective to the discourse of the animated artifact. Whereas ancient animated artifacts are often explained away as a perceptual error induced by rhetoric, magic, theurgy or divine intervention, this study takes technological animation seriously by focussing on a subset of artificial animation produced solely through technical procedures. Together, the papers in the volume explore how various motive forces, such as water and air, pulleys, and other instruments, actively contributed to giving objects agency and impacting their viewers. Further, it examines how the material conditions of the artifacts themselves played a role in the process of technological animation, whether through the distinctive materiality of bronze or the design of a statuette’s hinge. Show more