If cinema is a kind of record and representation of reality, animation can be regarded as a deconstruction and reconstruction of the real world, a type of surreal plasticity of images and heterogeneous result of them, endowing spectators with the visual experience different from realistic images. In the mean time, animation is the art of sounds and images that puts emphasis most on the disposition of images and sounds. From the works made by Norman McLaren, the Canadian pioneer of experimental animation, we can discover how the intimate combination of images and sounds can create the art of animation between it.

This statement will discuss animation art and the possibilities of the experiment inside frame and the plasticity outside the frame. The frame of videos as a constructive element comes from the “frame” of paintings in early times. Contemporary video artists take video installations as the mean of deconstructing frames of videos, connecting the narrative space inside frame of the screen carrying time-based art moving images and the display space outside frame of it to present the expanded cinema as the form of the aesthetic of videos.

By means of artwork, To the Stranger who Meets Me in the Darkness, attempting to profoundly discuss the possibilities of the connection between the surreal space inside frame of animation and the installation space outside the frame, and the mutual reference between the disembodied experience of spectators being absorbed into the illusionary space inside the screen and the embodiment of the immediacy of the spectators at the installation site. Furthermore, by offering the practice of migration of images (from literature to paintings and then to moving images) in the concept of the artwork, I try to present the multi-layered aesthetic of videos as the art of animation.