In any image that claims a space as representative, the effect of the real is based on an assuption of the validity of ideas of perspective developed during the Renaissance, as well as a notion of reality as defined by the effect on the viewer, namely, that the materials presented can be decoded in a way that makes some sort of common sense. This culminates in an idealized presentation of narrative in film, in computer games, in visual representation. A 'place' rather than a 'space' is constructed or assembled for the spectator to observe...

How does an animated image relate to a 'real' or a representative sceme that relates in some stable way to reality? That's the rub... animated images are notoriously fickle about such things. Not all animated images are narrative in the way that one might think. Take computer generated images in say, a computer game. Those images are produced upon demand... the 'Mario' of the 3-D video game Super Mario 64 has an image-avatar that responds directly to stimulation, to the gameplayer that feeds the game system input. Part of the captivating thing about video games like this one is that images are created as a response to a participation by a viewer. This is not only the definition of interactive, but a departure of narrative because the arrangement of various elements, visual, thematic, et cetera, are unfixed. Taken as you will. Almost comparable to a sequential set of images, unless there is active participation on the part of the participant/viewer, nothing really remarkable or interesting happens visually.

If you are familiar, think of any cartoon sequence that involves the Road-Runner. Here's another example of an animated medium that plays fast on one's common sense understanding of space. Basic physics get warped for comic effect. Cartoon bodies, and the physical spaces they represent within the construction of the cartoon can be obliterated, recreated, enlarged, and perverted without having an overall effect on the ways in which visual representations are conveyed.

It teaches the viewer the following: visual conventions of the 'real', subject as they are to convention and distortion, must be understood by the effects they try to create rather than any stable conception of space, or reality. Animated images are a key way into which human beings play with this perhaps unaknowledged uncertainty.