[-empyre-] CG and all things fuzzy, and some thoughts on ethics

Tue Feb 16 05:37:41 EST 2010

Hi, it's me again!

A couple of my main research interests are Animation (quelle surprise!) and Documentary, and I've been looking into how animation and nonfiction work together (or not) for some time now. 

See Chapter 5 of my book "Documentary: The Margins of Reality" (Wallflower, 2005); plus "Animated interactions: animation aesthetics and the 'interactive' documentary" in S. Buchan (ed.) with David Surman and Paul Ward (Associate Eds.) Animated 'Worlds' (John Libbey, 2006). The latter discusses 'Going Equipped' alongside Bob Sabiston's 1999 short 'Snack and Drink'

I think the idea of animation as a 'filter' is apposite - it is the filter through which re-presentations of real people and events are 'creatively treated' (to echo John Grierson again). This also makes some interesting possible connections to animation and memory, or animation and states of mind, and how these areas overlap (or contrast) with 'documentary'. Animations like 'Waltz with Bashir', 'Persepolis' or Andy Glynne's short films 'Animated minds' (about mental health) are all, arguably, sub-types of the animated documentary category, but approach it in very different ways

best wishes

Paul

________________________________

From: empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au on behalf of christopher sullivan
Sent: Sun 14/02/2010 18:22
To: soft_skinned_space; Suzanne Buchan
Cc: soft_skinned_space
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] CG and all things fuzzy, and some thoughts on ethics

Hi Suzanne, thanks for the generous discussion. As a "practitioner" I will say
that I am really not too bothered by the issues of representation, and truth, or
authenticity, I think those are interesting points of discussion, but nothing
that will ever be cured. but are we really that confused in the theater? I have
found that children for instance have very clear understandings of what is real,
what is manipulated, what is fantasy. the idea that media is continuously lying
to us, can also lead to a lot of political empathy, 
      I teach an alternative animation history class, and one of our weeks we
show all non fiction animation.
here is the week.
Reading: Understanding Animation, chapter 3 Narrative strategies. 68-92

Week 6 October 19th NON FICTION-
These films all use animations power to manifest images that have no filmic
record. The result is a curious take on truth and representation.. Is there an
emotional safety in these cartoony depictions, of otherwise unbearable images?

 Roger Ebert , speaking about Grave of the Fire flies.
 John and Faith Hubley. Sample 1960-75 The Dara Dogs. Denise Topicoff.
 -A is for Autism, Tim Web 1998. Champaine by Michael Sporn.
  Some Protection, Marjut  Rimmenen,1987 -Brother, Adam Benjamin Elliot 2003-
  Going Equipped ,Peter Lords 1989 -Abductees , Paul Vesters 1998
 The Fetishist, Jim Trainer 1998- Ryan, Chris Landrithe 2003
 A Room Near By, still life with animated dogs, Paul Ferlinger 2002- 2004

these films all deal with the strange in between possibilities of animation as a
filter for truth. I often show Ryan this week also, The students are always
interested in discussing the inclusion of Chris Landreth in the film. it is
both interesting and problematic, that his desire to implicate the documenter,
is also very problematic. does he truly believe that his state of crisis
parallels Ryan Larkin, in a SRO facility?

I argue that the real issue of representation through animation is not nearly so
complicated. and why do we have to create a theoretical censoring bureau,
just make the work, and let it hit people, all sloppy and imperfect.
do the questions below really need to be brought to some kind of conclusion?
is it truly a crisis?

"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 digitization
> 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."

as media professors, I think we have to also challenge media literacy Dogma
which implies that all viewers are completely at the mercy of the moving image.
once something is digital, sorry Lev, but it means nothing, it is a technical
expedient.

Animators have the opportunity to carve out new and wonderful ways of creating
work and bringing subjects to the screen that were not possible before.
A true act of political subversion is the recent screening of Don Hertsfeilds
new films. the audience came to see funny. instead they saw an amazing maturing
of his work into a dark and beautiful piece that made me weep several times.
He really seized the moment to talk about something important.

I say let's focus on content, not media, and get to work making the films that
we feel must be made. Chris

Quoting Suzanne Buchan <sbuchan at ucreative.ac.uk>:

>
> 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
>  character's 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-bounces at 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:   <rtf9 at cornell.edu>
> Website:  http://www.renateferro.net <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 at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
>

Christopher Sullivan
Dept. of Film/Video/New Media
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
112 so michigan
Chicago Ill 60603
csulli at saic.edu
312-345-3802
_______________________________________________
empyre forum
empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://www.subtle.net/empyre

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