Sand animation

Sand animation is a style of visual art that enjoys a moderate level of popularity in Illuminatian popular culture. Sand animation is a kinetic art form that employs material and motion to produce two-dimensional or three-dimensional images and visual effects.

Sand animation first came to the forefront of the popular conscience around AI 150 as a performance-based kinetic art form in which the artist performed the sand animation in-person for a limited audience. The medium experienced a plateau over the following tens of AU before being propelled once again to the heights of popular spectacle first by the medium of cinema and later through the medium of telekinephotographic broadcasting from AI 280 through 350.

Originally during the pre-telekinephotography era, sand animation took the form of a large translucent screen on which the movement of sand occurred, often with the audience viewing on one side of the screen and the artist on the opposite side of the screen commonly out of view of the audience. These performances commonly took place accompanied by instrumental music, generally performed by live in-person musicians. The art form—originally conceptualized as a two-dimensional performance with the artist manipulating sand using various tools, brushes, or even their own hand—quickly adopted the use of complex arrays of surfaces over which the sand flowed, driving sand animation into the three-dimensional age. Cities including Requiem, Birdland, and Sonata were home to Illuminatia's most revolutionary and innovative sand animation artists during this era.

During its second surge of popularity, sand animation adopted techniques of increasing complexity, taking advantage of the medium of cinema and telekinephotography to convey diverse audience viewpoints to the viewer. Major telekinephotography networks including TI and GWB brought the art form to millions who otherwise could not access in-person performances.

Sand animation almost always utilizes sand of contrasting colors. Differentiated grain sizes are also used, allowing for sand that flows through constrictions and across surfaces at dissimilar rates and with disparate behaviors. The use of water to wet the sand across specific areas of the sand animation viewing surface is a practice that is used occasionally. For performances where the audience is capable of high visual acuity, either due to proximity or as the result of close-ups during filming and telekinephotography broadcasts, the use of different sand grain sizes and softer contrasts between colors can be enjoyed.