[-empyre-] animetic machines

Mon Feb 8 03:12:56 EST 2010

Tom
What a wonderful generous post. Thank you.

Sent from my iPhone

On Feb 7, 2010, at 10:53 AM, "Thomas LaMarre, Prof." <thomas.lamarre at mcgill.ca 
 > wrote:

> Hi Thyrza,
>
> Thanks for these challenging questions.  Two of your comments were  
> striking for me.
>
> First, this question about animation subsuming cinema.  I think  
> that, although this formulation ultimately proved awkward and less  
> useful than intended (and we probably wouldn't want to embrace now),  
> it did address a sense that something was changing in media, and  
> suddenly animation - or animations and animation techniques -  
> appeared central to media studies, and film studies began to rethink  
> that field as 'moving image studies.'  at one level, there were  
> profound changes in production industries that many media scholars  
> have highlighted - for instance, there had developed fairly secure  
> and stable networks of production, distribution and circulation  
> around radio, cinema, and television, which encouraged a sense that  
> these really were different, almost in an ontological manner.  Then,  
> with new media technologies, as these apparently stable media began  
> to appear less stable, it was hard to describe the new situation,  
> but it seemed clear that animation techniques were somehow br
> idging or making new formations between the media formations that  
> were previously more distinct.  So the idea that animation was  
> subsuming cinema initially afforded a good way to sort through  
> this.  In fact, Oshii Mamoru, the famous animation director whose  
> films are neither films nor animation, made similarly bold claims  
> that all films were becoming animation.  But then the sense of what  
> animation was, was also shifting.
>
> For me (and I apologize if I am beating a cracked drum again) this  
> situation was an invitation to rethink moving images and media  
> without recourse to the unities of cinema and animation that were  
> formerly stabilized in industrial production and criticism.  And the  
> notion of the 'machine' (which incidentally is not mechanistic or  
> autopoetic but heterogenetic) seemed timely, because it was possible  
> to look at things in terms of assemblages with specific kinds of  
> spacing or intervals that had developed and persisted across media  
> formations.  So, for me, the animetic machine is a potential of the  
> moving image that is first actualized in animation techniques for  
> historical and technical reasons, but is not limited to animation  
> per se.  It can enfold and 'outfold' techniques, modes of  
> expression, and structures yet sustain a certain relation to the  
> moving image, a specific indeterminacy in the sense of a spacing and  
> a harnessing of forces.
>
> Second, I think this question - where are the brilliant works, and  
> what kind of stories would really make us care about any of this -  
> is so important.  I wish I had an easy answer.  On the one hand,  
> with my students, partly because of the kinds of animations we deal  
> with, it is clear that folklore, epic, and myth - in generic terms,  
> fabulation - are central to story making.  Students seem to grasp  
> intuitively Bakhtin's ideas about the epic as an abstract  
> encyclopedic form, even if they don't like his somewhat negative  
> evaluation.  But that negative evaluation does raise questions for  
> them.  On the other hand, a manga like that of young female artist  
> Arakawa Hiromi (Full Metal Alchemistic), which is now a  
> transnational media mix event, shows that such media mixes can deal  
> effectively with questions about genocide, fascism, gender, and  
> technology.  I think this is one of many brilliant works, but to  
> understand why it has had such impact on younger audiences, some of  
> the terms o
> f analysis have to change.  Or Cowboy Bebop with its anime genre  
> remix of jazz bebop and French and Italian new wave cinema.
>
> Such works are good points of entry into the works that we might  
> still find more challenging (like Passolini or Goddard) because they  
> are not discontinuous with them.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Tom
>
> On 06/02/10 4:23 PM, "Tgoodeve" <tgoodeve at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hello tim and rene all -- just a quick post as I am new to empyre and
> have been reading this dialogue but haven't really found a way in but
> mention of the quays made me feel i should make a stab. The discussion
> of deleuze and the animetic is fascinating. I hope we gi further with
> that. But I don't understand in the discussion so far Is the way
> cinema has to be subsumed completely by animation rather than looking
> for their connections through the emergence of the digital. (there was
> talk at the beginning of the problems of periodizing yet there seems
> to be a reliance on it. Btw: i think it's impossible not to
> periodize). Also continuity is one model not all of of the film theory
> past and I know you all know this. And what about the polish and
> eastern europen animators? And more in depth discussions of actual
> examples or moments or poetics turned into philosophy? ( if that makes
> sense? Like Pasolini on the long take -- I know that's film from the
> 20 th century). These questions are probably too specific at this
> point as you are all building from conversations based on bodies of
> scholarship that make assumptions about cinema and animation I'm not
> as schooled in so apologize but I do know some of lev's work. Your
> point about the design interface of sets of variables  (via software
> design)as opposed to the static image of analogue  animation is
> crucial. But is it just "good" or  when "formalist jackstraws" And
> where brilliant new aesthetics? We all have students drunk on the
> technology with norhing to say. I taught a course on storytelling
> oral, book, cinema to digital
> At nyu's ITP department and for their projects the students all asked
> me "but what should we make stories about?"
> And the quays -- since that is why Rene asked me in, we can talk about
> their work down the line since the whole issue of "animation" /cinema
> and other boundaries but it'd be along other lines.But the deleuzian
> machine model could be great.
> I'm writing this on my iPhone mid latte so excuse me if it is not well
> thought out.
> Best to all
> Thyrza
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Feb 6, 2010, at 11:37 AM, Timothy Murray <tcm1 at cornell.edu> wrote:
>
>>> Gerry,
>>
>> Perhaps I could have been more nuanced by indicating that I was
>> referring to as a somewhat limiting focus of 70-80s film theory on
>> the conventions of "continuity"-- I would include my own work in this
>> critique.  My remark was meant less as blame and more as admission.
>>
>> It's a shame that you understand cinema, and I guess new media, to
>> have been involved in a systematic degradation of the image.  Renate
>> and I spent last week in the company of the  Quay Brothers whose
>> quirky 35mm animations seemed to us to exemplify the thoughtful
>> splendor of what Tom calls the continuous variation of animation.
>> Although of a structure and quality that is very different from the
>> anime informing Tom's project,  they are splendid on the sticky (?)
>> screens of today.
>>
>> My understanding is that with each passing generation the
>> cinematic/screenic image has become further "complexified,"
>> particularly given the exemplary contributions of so many independent
>> screen artists as their work has extended the material horizons
>> offered by the development of ever sophisticated soft and hardware
>> machines.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Tim
>>
>>
>>> I wonder.
>>>
>>> Is the readiness to blame cinematic studies not another way of
>>> ingorning how animation (like cinema, and probably all media), is a
>>> shadow of its former self? Oh certainly, animation cicra 1960 was
>>> pretty bad, but how much better it was than the drivel which aheres
>>> to the sticky screens of today. With each passing generation the
>>> image is further degraded and, simultaneously, a new geneation of
>>> theorists gather to ignore its decline.
>>>
>>> My best
>>>
>>> Gerry
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ________________________________________
>>> From: empyre-bounces at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>>> [empyre-bounces at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au] On Behalf Of Timothy Murray
>>> [tcm1 at cornell.edu]
>>> Sent: February 6, 2010 10:20 AM
>>> To: soft_skinned_space
>>> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] animetic machines
>>>
>>> Hi, Tom,
>>>
>>> Thanks ever so much for your stimulating post on  "animetic
>>> machines."   I think you're really onto something important in
>>> stressing the flow and force of the "continuous variation" of  
>>> framing
>>> and imaging as it traverses the interrelated histories of cinema,
>>> animation, and new media.
>>>
>>> Indeed, the legacy of film studies has shackled us with a rather
>>> deadening sense of the economy of "continuity" to such an extent  
>>> that
>>> I suspect that the theoretical and artistic communities could well
>>> have shied away from embracing the "continuous" given its confusions
>>> with the "continuity" so important to the conventional editing of  
>>> the
>>> Hollywood legacy.
>>>
>>> It's in a similar vein that I've been interested in "enfolding" into
>>> the hegemony of the perspective machine  the concept, flow, and  
>>> force
>>> of the "fold" as a space/field/concept of continuous machinic
>>> variation.   While I've tended to foreground the more baroque and
>>> cinematic aspects of the fold in my  writing, your post and recent
>>> book sensitize me to the fact that much greater attention should be
>>> paid to the role played by the  legacy and conceptuality of  
>>> animation
>>> in the development of the digital fold, particularly within the  
>>> space
>>> of cinema.
>>>
>>> Thanks ever so much for such a cogent summary of the very complex
>>> argument you launch in The Anime Machine.
>>>
>>> Best,
>>>
>>> Tim
>>> --
>>> 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 at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> empyre forum
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>>> 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 at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
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