Fermenting Ideas: Intercultural Collaboration as a Pedagogical Tool for Teaching Experimental Animation

Inspiration for animation can arise from the most unexpected places. You might draw motivation from a story you’ve heard, a personal experience, or even a process that seems unrelated to the everyday practice of animation. In this paper, I present the intercultural collaboration developed as a pedagogical tool to teach animation and increase student commitment and accountability. As part of a Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL)/Virtual Exchange (VE), my students from experimental animation in the United States were encouraged to discover connections that might not be immediately obvious when collaborating with students from food technology in Brazil. They were challenged to find visual solutions that invited them to reinterpret food fermentation processes as animations. Some of the thought-provoking questions posed for this exchange included: How does fermentation contribute to preservation? How can ideas “ferment” over time? If fermentation transforms microorganisms into something entirely new, how can we discuss the process of fermentation in relation to animation? The collaboration among these international peers aimed to inspire animation students to create unique experiments using various materials and hands-on techniques that effectively communicate the fermentation process they chose to explore. To facilitate the understanding of this collaborative journey, in this paper, I will first provide a brief literature review covering the history, definition, and goals of COIL/VE. Next, I will discuss the collaborative project, including how the partnership was established and the expectations set. I will then outline the course structure and describe the assignment process, showcasing examples from student animations and sharing their experiences and feedback. Finally, I will highlight articles on the pedagogical impact of COIL/VE as an educational tool, along with texts focusing on animation practice and hands-on teaching, such as those by Corrie Francis Parks (2016) and Dan and Lienors Torre (2019).