Animator Sydney Padua’s interaction with 19th-century science includes an obsession with Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace, and the Analytical Engine that led to some of the first visualisations and animations of the machine. Most recently she teamed up with the Constructing Scientific Communities project, and their work on Science Gossip, animating illustrations from the 19th-century nature periodicals into shareable gifs. In this paper she shares some of her inspirations and processes for making creative projects from historical archives.

Animation is still a young art form with many under-explored avenues of expression. Although the lay person’s view of animation is still predominantly that of entertainment on screens, it can also exist as participatory sculpture, paintings in motion, live performance visuals, and experiences of exploration and discovery. Such artworks challenge us to rethink what animation is and how it can engage people. As an artist, I draw on all of this and more through works based on one of the keystones of animation—the zoetrope, or “wheel of life.”

The Projection Studio (https://theprojectionstudio.com/) has been creating public art with sound and projection for over thirty years. During this time, we have built a body of work which uses video projection mapping and audio as a tool for public engagement. Using large-scale public art for public engagement can give results that other types of engagement cannot. It can draw large audiences, new audiences, and give researchers and academics the opportunity to meet people who would not normally engage with the subject matter. In this article, we reflect on how that process can work, using as an example the award-winning projection and sound piece “Victorian Speed of Life.” This was created for the European Research Council funded project “Diseases of Modern Life” (https://diseasesofmodernlife.web.ox.ac.uk/home). We will also look at its impact on both researchers and the public audience.