Renate (I can't turn off HTML on the email I'm suing, so I hope the inserted line breaks improve reading.)
Many practice-based animation and film programmes - as well as photography and design - are increasingly replacing analogue with digital, with all the implications. While I'm not a hands-on 'practitioner' per se I don't teach practice I can say that my university has two programmes, and both use digital tools but foreground fine arts-based style, process and students attend life-drawing classes. There are others who follow the same material-based philosophy, including Simon's and the RCA' this is not, however, representative of the wider general shift to digital. With the current disastrous funding cuts at HEIs in the UK, a room of computers is more sustainable than puppet animation studios and art rooms; hence it is becoming digital almost everywhere. This has implications on how students learn, speeds up production instead of slowing down, the process of drawing, painting and model building is very much part of developing narrative, and good analogue films need time. Others here in empyre who are practice-based can probably answer your question better. Your question about CGI brings me to another set of thoughts about the digital and the artefact and some ethical implications that arise from the use of CGI in animation and film. Since the digital shift, the manipulated moving image has been the focus of heated debates around representation, truth values and ethical responsibility of its commissioners, makers and distributors. The unreliablility of the photographic image as it became enhanced or altered by digital technologies has had a profound effect on audiences, a topic thematised by Thomas Elsaesser, Lev Manovich and Siegfried Zielinski, ethical philosopher Jane Bennett (The Enchantment of Modern Life, 2001) and by others who may be on empyre. The increasing convergence, barrage and resulting pervasiveness of manipulated imagery, including traditional and digital animation, has overwhelmed many of its viewers, and this has pressing philosophical and ethical connotations. In terms of the status of indexicality and truth claims of the visual, in 1998 Elsaesser suggested a crisis was evolving: "Any technology that materially affects this status, and digitisation would seem to be such a technology, thus puts in crisis deeply-held beliefs about representation and visualization, and many of the discourses critical, scientific or aesthetic based on, or formulated in the name of the indexical in our culture, need to be re-examined." (Elsaesser, Thomas, "Digital Cinema: Delivery, Event, time", in: Cinema Futures: Cain, Abel or Cable?,1998. Pp. 201-222) While following these debates, I became sensitised to one specific i mpact of manipulated images during a screening of Roland Emmerich's 1994 Independence Day. In the rather naive encounter between the American missionaries and the alien Mother ship we witness a brief moment, only a few frames, when a fireball engulfs the pilot on impact. Now in itself, this is not an unfamiliar scene, and it has been repeated in action and war films to excess. My point here is that the image manipulation was of the 'invisible' sort, i.e. not 'in-your-face' CGI that creates spectacle that is highly aware of its difference to so-called normal perception and representation. The fireball in the cockpit was created to look like live action. So what's the problem? Well, in that fraction of a second of ID4, an image flashed in my mind that, depending on your generation, may also be indelibly etched in your own.: this 1963 photo by Malcolm Brown http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%ADch_Qu?ng_D?c The mental image of this while watching ID4 was an emotional response on my part, a response of what could be described as 'negative empathy' that incited ethical awareness about the inherent 'wrongness' of this scene. This personal example might illustrate why we need articulated critical reactions to films like these, to facilitate a sober understanding of the impact such films are having on our collective sense of ethics. In light of the inane acceptance of violent images just because we are 'used to them' and the role CGI and animation has to play in this, addressing the crisis rooted in the loss of indexical truth could effectively address a re-examination of the discourse around ethical responsibility in image production. Discussions around animation especially the kind we are not supposed to see have tended to focus on technical wizardry and the properties of programmes to create the impossible. It may be part of a new body of work for critical investigations of spectatorial manipulation in a digital age, a territory that needs ethical navigation to understand the philosophical consequences of this kind of imagery. The next issue of the ANM journal (5.1) will have an essay by philosopher and cultural studies scholar Elizabeth Walden that explores just these issues and discusses a puppet animation film; she discusses how "elements of the narrative structure and the camera work give the materials used in the characters project a moral standing in the film, which draws audience and filmmaker as well as the character into an ethical situation which is significant to our shared moment in the digital era." So I'll leave this for now, and see if anyone has some thoughts on it. I'm also happy to engage with the Quays' works, if there is interest out there. Suzanne -----Original Message----- From: empyre-boun...@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au on behalf of Renate Ferro Sent: Sat 2/13/2010 04:37 To: soft_skinned_space Subject: Re: [-empyre-] CG and all things fuzzy Dear Paul and Suzanne, Can you both talk about how CG fits into your animation programs? At Cornell, Computer Graphics and 3D animation is taught by Computing faculty. It is in the art department where students, particularly recently, have been creating stop action, frame by frame, roto-scoping, drawing based and a medley of other fuzzies. Whether working from photography based or original drawing. their novel, quirky rendering styles, interdisciplinary interests and criticality make their work fresh and innovative. How does it work in the UK? Renate Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: <r...@cornell.edu> Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ _______________________________________________ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
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