Cartoon Physics/The Revenge of the Tangible

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
Golden-age Loony Toons is amazing because of its ontological malleability when it comes to the laws of physics.

A character will be squashed flat by an anvil and then roll around like a coin before popping back as though they're a balloon filling with air.

physical properties shift instantaneously to facilitate the joke. once character will bounce off a wall like it's a trampoline but within a second another character crashes into it and it's solid rock (the characters teeth may then shatter like glass).

faces can be stretched.

it's hyper-tactility and hyper-kinetic. it's all stretching and bouncing and rubbery and squishy and squeezable and inflatable, etc.

and there's music that's just like that. it's music that's an affront to the intangibility of dematerialisation. it distills and concentrates the joy of the physical world in much the same was as cartoon physics does.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
boston dynamics robots being kicked around and falling over.


with both these songs there's also a stretchy quality to them. something that makes your mouth chew like you've got too much chewing gum in .
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
acid house "squelching" basslines.


all the kids shows in the 90's had a huge preoccupation with slime and gunk. this is music that relishes in the same thing.
 

luka

Well-known member
I was watching a bit of Rustie's boiler room set today. That very short lived 'wonky' scene was this.
 

luka

Well-known member
Also topography of the lungs, my favourite free improv album is very looney toons
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
third's list (being the manifesto of the physical) is great for this.

this one's pulling an elastic band in and out

 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
this is the last entry in third's list and it's full of physical signifiers.

very rubbery synths in it. some oud sounding strings that really feel like something bouncing off the strings. something that sounds like when you rub your fingers along a balloon and it makes a fart sound.

 

luka

Well-known member
Silly walks, rubber legs, extendable necks, MC Escher as cartoon, the way caterpillars move, worms, oozing, undulating, stretching, bouncing, bulging, expanding balloons, hallucinations of walls curving and rippling, clocks melting. Time-reel manipulation, sped up and slowed right down, similar manipulation of the gravity field, heavy, leaden, sunken down, loping, bouncing, floating off.
 
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