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

[Tgoodeve]

Thanks Richard. I sent your note into Michael. What a fun idea to make
February animation every year.

Re: something christopher said about empyre in general about high  
brow/ low brow of discussion -- I wanted to add what's been so great  
about being part of this is the variety of voices, the generosity of  
everyone , the wealth of information and the levels of respect for  
very different view points.

Onto the women...

)Which links to that great great question of all: animation and  
pedagogy. Getting this  stuff out. Uding it. Other countries. How you  
teach or where in classes -- curious re: outreach. Etc.....next year.)

Sent from my iPhone

On Mar 1, 2010, at 11:51 AM, Richard Wright ar<futurenatural at blueyonder.co.uk 
 > wrote:

> 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 “go 
>> od 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 think 
>> ing about animation. Animation just seems to be fundamentally abou 
>> t time, or spacetime more so even than cinema. -- I have only just 
>>  thought this. I think there's something there and maybe I will th 
>> ink 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 argu 
>> menst as I see it. But.
>>
>>  “animation” as a mega-media ontology that cinema, as a  
>> historical language and institution, After these three weeks anima 
>> tion is the uber category klein bottle which houses the a four dim 
>> ensional 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 ha 
>> t c/o Lev manovich, but “animation”  with its associations has  
>> more open ness to time, less constriction to media (anything can b 
>> e animated)—it is movement that animates and time via the repetiti 
>> on 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 Su 
>> zanne'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 t 
>> ime – even documentary time because the news program leads in sayi 
>> ng the artist is making a document about heir city right? It is fa 
>> miliar but toy storied. Pixar uncanny. Unhomey Shift-tilt time. Th 
>> e incredibly miniaturized hyper manic shrinking man
>>
>>
>> Re: Richard and animation and narrative and animation. It’s why an 
>> imation is so essential isn’t it. It is the place with no laws. Al 
>> tthough one works within vertical and horizontal axes of Cartesian 
>>  space ,  no physical laws need be followed. My love of film and l 
>> iterature in my youth was the avant garde and modernism – anything 
>>  to bresk from classical models/ anything  that played with time a 
>> nd narrative—the more non linear the better. Why Because I wanted  
>> to believe time was up for grabs, that it was purely subjective, t 
>> hat it’s all about social construts and things like that—Proust,  
>> Renais, Robbe Grillet , parallel time, black holes etc…but Sean Ca 
>> rroll makes the obvious point time has only one direction, even if 
>>  we can make it go backwards and sideways in avant garde films, li 
>> fe 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 A 
>> rrow” is so brilliant – because he writes the actions reversed  
>> so the SS officers actions in the death camps, as he lives them be 
>> come acts of reversals into life. It’s amazing. But Amis is unusua 
>> l. “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 o 
>> pposite because he was referring to feature animation! I guess I w 
>> as thinking of smaller and probably more experimental hand drawn a 
>> nimation.
>>
>>
>>
>> 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 am 
>> ong 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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