[-empyre-] February on -empyre Theorizing Animation: Content and Context
February on empyre soft-skinned space: Theorizing Animation: Concept and Context Moderated by Renate Ferro (US) and Tim Murray with invited discussants Thomas LaMarre (CA), Lev Manovich (UK), Susan Buchan (UK), Paul Ward (UK), Eric Patrick (US), Richard Wright (UK), Thyrza Nichols Goodeve (US), Christopher Sullivan (US), with others to be announced. Theorizing Animation: Concept and Context http://www.subtle.net/empyre Animated worlds are proliferating globally. In consideration of what seems like an explosion of online and museum exhibitions celebrating animation, we would like to spend the month considering the intersection between art, animation, and theory. While some of our guests theorize cinematic interventions in animation (timely given the success of Avatar) others create, curate, and ponder the experimental narratives and animated paintings that have captured the curiosity of the art world. What are the advantages of creating and thinking through animation? How do real worlds and virtual worlds overlap? What about the trend to feature animation in museum contexts, often at the expense of digitally interactive work which might be more expense to mount and opaque to witness? Can a critical distinction be made between blockbuster animation and boutique creations, often with more poignant narrative content? Earlier this fall, Tim marveled at the extent to which animation was featured in the Asia Art Biennial in Taiwan, with fascinating pieces by the Israeli filmmaker, Ari Folman and the Russian collective AES+F, as well as a separate show of Korean animation at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Art. That is now followed by the Animamix Biennial-Visual Attract and Attack now ongoing at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taiwan. The cross platform solo exhibitions also have caught the eye of much of the museum public. Tim and Renate visited Sadie Benning's (USA) essay on queer sexuality in Pause Play at the Whitney Museum in New York and look forward to William Kentridge's (South Africa) Five Themes exhibition, a survey of almost thirty-years of work including many animated films, that opened last season at the MOMA San Francisco and will be at MOMA New York at the end of this month. Kentridge's work explores themes of colonialism and apartheid often through lyrical and comedic lenses that sometimes poke fun at the artist himself. His work merges the real world into animation and back again. Just this week Cornell hosted an extravaganza of The Quay Brothers film work with an exhibition of their set design. It was exciting to hear them talk about their work in several on campus forums. This month we invite our guests and subscribers to engage critically with the development of animation. We will be inviting artists and theorists to consider the concepts and context of contemporary global animation. We look forward to this months international discussion of all things animated. Renate and Tim 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
[-empyre-] Greetings!
Hello, Since Renate has already introduced me, I am happy to bypass self-introduction and throw out some ideas about animation. Since my research on animation is centred on movement, I thought maybe to begin with a few words about what I think is at stake in looking at animation in terms of movement. When I begun writing about animation, I was surprised at how rarely people have actually explored the question of movement in animation. We often sing the praises of movement in animation, and it is pretty much assumed that the attractiveness of animation comes of movement. Yet a sustained discussion of movement has been largely avoided. This is a shame because I think that animation creators think first and foremost with movement. Discussions of animation usually dwell on image (formal) analysis or the 'illusion of life.' The illusion-of-life approach calls attention to the potential for an experience of the uncanny that arises when something that is supposed to be inorganic or inert comes to life. In other words, in both approaches, there is a general bias that animation is a matter of adding movement to images or things that are already out there. Movement is treated as secondary to image, as a supplement to it. But in animation (as in cinema) movement is something in itself. And moving images are not illusions of movement. They are real experiences of movement. In other words, if we rely on a real/unreal or real/illusion divide, we won't get very far in understanding animation (or cinema or video games). Once we give priority to movement, it becomes clear that we can't confine movement in animation to character animation. In fact, I think that too much attention has been focused on character animation rather than the force of the moving image. If we begin with the force of the moving image rather than with the gaps between frames, we see that animation is as much an art of compositing as it is of animating bodies. In fact, I would argue that animation gives priority to compositing (the movement between layers within images that then becomes spread across frames) over character animation (based on the movement between or across images). In this respect, because it is based on what I like to call the multiplanar image, so-called traditional animation anticipates the dynamics of the digital image. This is especially true of limited cel animation. It is precisely for this reason that animation can frequently said be subsuming cinema today-as Lev Manovich has famously noted. But this is not a matter of the formal properties of animation (as is often supposed in new media studies) but of an 'animetic machine' that harnesses a specific potential of the moving image. It is on this basis that I think we can understand both the ubiquity of animation today and the crucial role that it plays in media mix. Cheers, Tom ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] farewell -empyrean- : beyond the gates
Christina, Thanks, and, hoping you do more than lurk, wishing you the immoderate best, Simon Taylor www.brazilcoffee.co.nz www.squarewhiteworld.com ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] Greetings!
Thanks, Tom, for providing such a precise summary of your theory of the movement of animation. Could you say a little more about the multiplanar image and also elaborate on how it anticipates the digital image? Thanks so much. Tim Hello, Since Renate has already introduced me, I am happy to bypass self-introduction and throw out some ideas about animation. Since my research on animation is centred on movement, I thought maybe to begin with a few words about what I think is at stake in looking at animation in terms of movement. When I begun writing about animation, I was surprised at how rarely people have actually explored the question of movement in animation. We often sing the praises of movement in animation, and it is pretty much assumed that the attractiveness of animation comes of movement. Yet a sustained discussion of movement has been largely avoided. This is a shame because I think that animation creators think first and foremost with movement. Discussions of animation usually dwell on image (formal) analysis or the 'illusion of life.' The illusion-of-life approach calls attention to the potential for an experience of the uncanny that arises when something that is supposed to be inorganic or inert comes to life. In other words, in both approaches, there is a general bias that animation is a matter of adding movement to images or things that are already out there. Movement is treated as secondary to image, as a supplement to it. But in animation (as in cinema) movement is something in itself. And moving images are not illusions of movement. They are real experiences of movement. In other words, if we rely on a real/unreal or real/illusion divide, we won't get very far in understanding animation (or cinema or video games). Once we give priority to movement, it becomes clear that we can't confine movement in animation to character animation. In fact, I think that too much attention has been focused on character animation rather than the force of the moving image. If we begin with the force of the moving image rather than with the gaps between frames, we see that animation is as much an art of compositing as it is of animating bodies. In fact, I would argue that animation gives priority to compositing (the movement between layers within images that then becomes spread across frames) over character animation (based on the movement between or across images). In this respect, because it is based on what I like to call the multiplanar image, so-called traditional animation anticipates the dynamics of the digital image. This is especially true of limited cel animation. It is precisely for this reason that animation can frequently said be subsuming cinema today-as Lev Manovich has famously noted. But this is not a matter of the formal properties of animation (as is often supposed in new media studies) but of an 'animetic machine' that harnesses a specific potential of the moving image. It is on this basis that I think we can understand both the ubiquity of animation today and the crucial role that it plays in media mix. Cheers, Tom ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre -- Timothy Murray Director, Society for the Humanities http://www.arts.cornell.edu/sochum/ Curator, The Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art, Cornell Library http://goldsen.library.cornell.edu Professor of Comparative Literature and English A. D. White House Cornell University Ithaca, New York 14853 ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
