[-empyre-] animation and short term memory (was, a long time ago: interpreting datasets, etc)

[Richard Wright]

Thyrza,
the Perpetual ZOOZ piece looks great. I will add that to my "data  
visualisation" list. The gallery version is real time generated then  
(?), but the display is still the spinning planes we see on the web  
site? I thought for a second that it was literally two video monitors  
or data projectors tied back to back and suspended. Perhaps that  
would be a bit too embodied.

By the way, I wasn't talking specifically about long form or short  
form animation or the difference between narrative and non-narrative.  
The distinction was between different kinds of narrative. But I now  
realise I wasn't making myself clear enough.

Are we at the end of the animation month already? Let's make February  
animation month every year!

Richard

On 27 Feb 2010, at 18:05, T Goodeve wrote:

> Dear Simon, Chris, Suzanne:
>
> Simon! How cruel. I want to fly out there this minute (time  
> metaphor there we go). Please do promote such things. Sounds  
> fantastic. (Too good about "Chris Speed ". I went to a bank teller  
> the other day and the name plate said "James Bank"  I am not a  
> “good eve” though.).
>
> A sense organ for time. What a lovely image. Maybe that is what  
> indeed we are in total. I am reading “From Eternity to Here” by  
> Sean Carroll and somehow it makes sense to be reading it and  
> thinking about animation. Animation just seems to be fundamentally  
> about time, or spacetime more so even than cinema. -- I have only  
> just thought this. I think there's something there and maybe I will  
> think about it more at some point, I’d like to.  But perhaps it’s  
> why we seem to agree animation now has subsumed (but not “killed” ) 
> cinema —and not just because of digital etc  or because of  the  
> animated feature (and anime) but because , taking on Suzanne’s  
> argument here which I can’t really do justice to, animation as a  
> metaphysical category, a way of defining the moving image NOW  
> “animation studies” offers a more encompassing way of thinking  
> about and discussion these worlds. It’s a historical argumenst as I  
> see it. But.
>
>  “animation” as a mega-media ontology that cinema, as a historical  
> language and institution, After these three weeks animation is the  
> uber category klein bottle which houses the a four dimensional ZOOB  
> modeling system (see below), for the new species of animated,  
> computation, cinematic moving image objects that are now breeding  
> out there. Until this discussion I never thought about “animation”  
> as an uber category, I think new media was given the hat c/o Lev  
> manovich, but “animation”  with its associations has more open ness  
> to time, less constriction to media (anything can be animated)—it  
> is movement that animates and time via the repetition and the  
> result is action based in time. Or something like this. Others can  
> follow. These are really ideas that are getting ahead of me. I  
> haven’t had coffee yet. This will take me to answering Suzanne's  
> request re: Michael Joaquin Grey's work.
>
> But first to Christopher, (and hardy har har by the way!!!) you  
> were the one who posted the
> shift tilt you tube that is so interesting and disturbing but  
> relevant:
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_1zzPCnyOI&feature=related
>
>
>
> The stop motion time lapse transforms the world into an animated  
> child's world. Someone somewhere in all these posts discussed the  
> world becoming animated, now here it is all pee wee’s great”big”  
> adventure but it's more complex than that. The shift/tilt format is  
> a form of animated time and it fore shortens real time – even  
> documentary time because the news program leads in saying the  
> artist is making a document about heir city right? It is familiar  
> but toy storied. Pixar uncanny. Unhomey Shift-tilt time. The  
> incredibly miniaturized hyper manic shrinking man
>
>
> Re: Richard and animation and narrative and animation. It’s why  
> animation is so essential isn’t it. It is the place with no laws.  
> Altthough one works within vertical and horizontal axes of  
> Cartesian space ,  no physical laws need be followed. My love of  
> film and literature in my youth was the avant garde and modernism –  
> anything to bresk from classical models/ anything  that played with  
> time and narrative—the more non linear the better. Why Because I  
> wanted to believe time was up for grabs, that it was purely  
> subjective, that it’s all about social construts and things like  
> that—Proust, Renais, Robbe Grillet , parallel time, black holes etc… 
> but Sean Carroll makes the obvious point time has only one  
> direction, even if we can make it go backwards and sideways in  
> avant garde films, life isn’t an avant garde film  Time has one  
> direction: forward. You can't reverse a burned house. This is why  
> Martin Amis's “Time's Arrow” is so brilliant – because he writes  
> the actions reversed so the SS officers actions in the death camps,  
> as he lives them become acts of reversals into life. It’s amazing.  
> But Amis is unusual. “Memento” did not work. Everything had to go  
> forward as it went backward so it never went backward. Cinema is so  
> dependent on narrative.
>
>
> I just read Richard’s post. I thought he had said the opposite!—why  
> has animation been so free of non-narrative. But he said the  
> opposite because he was referring to feature animation! I guess I  
> was thinking of smaller and probably more experimental hand drawn  
> animation.
>
>
>
> Animation and Time: Is this an old saw: La Jetee? The ultimate film  
> about time. But can we bring it into a discussion of time and  
> animation perhaps only because of the amount of time between frames  
> -- 24 frames per second for each length of the shot that equals a  
> still photograph, except for the one moment of "movement" when the  
> woman blinks and looks at us.  But just for purposes of us here in  
> this discussion, can it be included as a kind of cine animation? Is  
> this interesting re: defining animation vs. cinema re: time.? A  
> much bigger discussion but just curious. Are there two such times?   
> In researching animation relevant to the Quays I found an animated  
> film Chris Marker made with the animator Borowczyk. [By the way  
> Christopher: I’m kind of in a pickle as to referring to the Quays.  
> It’s why I was asked to participate and Suzanne ‘s written a book  
> on them and we’re lucky to have her input and there’s only a few  
> more days so hold on, soon empire will be onto other things. I’ve  
> learned a lot about other animators in the meantime , you among them.]
>
> Finally, thank you Suzanne for your response a few posts ago to the  
> sound question -- your book will fill in so much for us all and  
> there is so much to look into.
>
> Re: Michael Joaquin Grey
>
> http://citroid.com/citroid_orange/video.html
>
> oi vey
>
> His website is not up to date and his work is very varied and hard  
> to summarize but what is relevant here are what he calls his  
> computational films  or "dream anatomies." I'll describe the one  
> that was at P.S. 1 this summer with his exhibition and also showed  
> along with other works of his at the premier of Sundance a few  
> weeks ago.
>
>
>
> Here is his press release.
>
>
>
> Playing with a unifying metaphysics of the micro, macro and media  
> worlds,
>
> Michael Joaquin Grey presents new computational cinema works that  
> re-envision
>
> critical moments in culture and phenomena.
>
>
>
> Grey creates software to break down film into its basic primitives  
> -- the building blocks
>
> of media. He captures body signals and sound to reanimate and  
> dematerialize existing media
>
> and create 'film objects', 'cellular films' and ‘dream anatomies’  
> of our familiar media body.
>
> The computational works are not recorded but are dynamic systems  
> performed in real time.
>
> Often there are relationships that can be created between sound and  
> image in time and space
>
> that could not exist with recorded video or film. The works may  
> synchronize with your own body
>
> to create new synesthetic and proprioceptive cinema experiences.
>
>
>
> In ‘Perpetual ZOOZ’ the artist and his mother’s heartbeat  
> (biological signals) are used to
>
> reanimate the "Wizard of OZ" into a 'film object'  (Madonna and  
> Child). The film is transformed into a 3D object
>
> through the union of 2 films playing simultaneously in space and  
> revolving back to back on their own axis;
>
> one film moves forward in time while one moves backward, each  
> conducted by their respective heartbeats.
>
> The two films meet only at one point in time, the moment in the  
> film Dorothy opens the door to enter ‘OZ’ as the film
>
> transitions from black & white into color.
>
>
>
> This is on his website but it is not the real thing at all because
> it must be shown as a live action object because that's what it is  
> i.e. the visual data is of the wizard of oz and the algorythm of  
> his mohter's and his own heartbeat is run through a super computer  
> so it is A LIVING OBJECT. It is literally animated then. Yet it  
> works with film and on the computer in real time. The visual  
> information of The Wizard of Oz is projected going forward in one  
> direction, and backward in the other. At only one point they meet.  
> You become an "embodier" rather than a viewer-- the frequency  
> begins to affect your own body rhythm. It is a very uncanny  
> experience both visually and physically. There is the added effect  
> of the film as a cultural memory on top of the knowledge of the  
> heartbeat of a mother and son. It is all about animation in terms  
> of the body, cinema, technology, etc... he calls it a "dream anatomy."
>
>
> I think I’ve said enough for this pot.
>
> Cheers everyone.
>
>
> Thyrza
>

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