Transformation is possible for the animator and her animation, if she follows a contract : the virtual object may shift and change, as long as it keeps the same number of vertices from source to destination. Or so this requirement was a technological limitation of modeling software (in the mid 1990s) that could render the motion of one virtual object changing to another.

The following animations explore what my colleague, Christopher Burnett has called "Morphage", (Morphing / Montage), or that is, using digital tools for metamorphosis to juxtapose visual elements in representation. As filmic montage had enhanced the psychology of film characters and challenged viewers to interpret film in non-literal ways, so "morphage" is a visual technique with its own distinct operations upon visual (and virtual) material or objects.

Figures

1. A still from an object morph.
2. A mini-narrative of Edwin Abbot's Flatland.
3. An attempt to fractalize Albrecht Dürer's Perspective Grid as well as to shift / morph the object that Cartesian perspective feels obligated to perspectivally render.
4. A variation on the fractalization of Dürer.