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

[davin heckman]

I know that this is far away from the original point that Richard
Wright was getting at in terms of memory and animation.  But I do
think that there are aspects of animation that do get tied up in
questions of memory and production, which are expressed not through
formal experiments, but through content.

If you look, for instance, at Pixar's films (Toy Story, Cars, Monsters
Inc, Wall-E, etc), there is a pervasive sense of loss and nostalgia
(which reminds me of a conversation I had with Stephanie Boluk at DAC
on "melancholia".)  Here, you have people who love animation working
on a form beyond the brink of transformation (the employed animators
that I know all prepared themselves for a Hollywood that needed lots
of hands to draw things).  Animation has become a highly rationalized
endeavor, where the animation itself (beyond character design,
storyboarding, etc) tend to be handled through automation or
outsourcing.  The highly paid labor has been reduced, primarily, to
conceptual work.  Maybe I am reading too much into this, but when I
watched Toy Story or Cars, the big message seems to be that growth
results in a form of forgetfulness.  And this forgetfulness is a
forgetfulness of intimacy, humanity, care.

In live-action filmmaking, on the other hand, the estrangement
produced by efficiency is different.  In live action, the actors and
crew still work in the presence of each other.  However, to make
movies more efficiently, the production of the film exists outside of
the narrative flow of the film.  The director shoots all the scenes at
a particular location at once.  And then it is assembled by an editor.
 This means that for some people, working on a film is the experience
of little arcs of narration held together by scene.  Yet the larger
narrative structure of the the production process is organized by the
logic of proximity.

Perhaps the narrative differences between animation and live action
have more to do with the aesthetics of the relationships between
workers and management than with the avant-garde impulse?

Peace!
Davin