International Journal of Film and Media Arts

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Percorrer International Journal of Film and Media Arts por assunto "ANIMATION"

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    The abstracted real : speculations on experimental animated documentary
    (Lusofona University, 2021) Hattler, Max; Escola de Comunicação, Arquitetura, Artes e Tecnologias da Informação
    This paper proposes a debate around the documentary character of experimental animation by looking at examples of my personal animation practice which probe the use of real-world source materials in the construction of audio-visual experiences across abstract and concrete. By employing the aesthetics of abstraction in particular ways, these ‘abstracted’ animation works underline ambivalence and ambiguity in creating open-ended narratives which aim to question, undermine, or transcend their everyday sources. Through a discussion of theoretical positions around notions of realism, materiality, embodiment, indexicality, actuality and process, what becomes apparent is an intrinsic relation between ‘reality’ and ‘animation,’ whereby the viewer actively participates in meaning-making processes in the reception of the work. The claim of the paper is to identify abstracted animation in its capacity to create ‘thinking spaces’ which instead of representing reality, establish what can be called the Abstracted Real. Keywords: experimental animated documentary, abstracted animation, real-world abstractions, animation as a thinking space, indexicality, meaning making, the abstracted real.
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    Against animated documentary?
    (Edições Universitárias Lusófonas, 2016) Roe, Annabelle Honess; Escola de Comunicação, Arquitetura, Artes e Tecnologias da Informação
    Animated documentaries have been written about in a mostly positive way that explores the way the form enhances and expands the documentary agenda. This is true of scholarly and academic writing as well as that in the popular press and film reviews. However, some authors have taken issue with the ascription of the term ‘documentary’ to animated documentaries. In addition, there are potential issues regarding audience response to animated documentary and the technical proficiency of the films themselves as they become more ubiquitous. This chapter explores the existing, and potential objections to and criticisms of animated documentary and suggests that a more ‘360-degree’ discussion of the form will enrich the scholarly discourse on animated documentary.
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    Animated mythologies of tribal India: from tales of origination to multimedia technology
    (Lusofona University, 2018) Douglas, Tara Purnima; Escola de Comunicação, Arquitetura, Artes e Tecnologias da Informação
    Indigenous cultures worldwide have long held distinctive beliefs that ascribed a living soul or anima to biological and non-biological entities including plants, particular inanimate objects and to natural phenomena. To the people who belonged to these traditional social groups, organic matter was vibrant, sentient and existed in dynamic relationship to Humankind. Anthropological studies seek to decode the nuances of tribal rituals and the traditional practices of ‘other’ cultures; however, the underpinning of objectivity is challenged by indigenous research, to question the underlying authority. For these societies, the merit is present in the interconnections and relationships. In India, liminal local perspectives have been largely excluded from mainstream media and this project investigates ethnographic film and animation as participatory media practice by indigenous storytellers in collaborations with the film-maker. The aim is to also present the contemporary experiences recounted by the participants as we revisit their timeless narratives. In the process this becomes a transformative experience that reconnects us with the social function of the artistic practices that have sustained traditional societies.
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    Animated urban surfaces : spatial augmented reality in public discourse
    (Lusofona University, 2021) Tritthart, Martina; Escola de Comunicação, Arquitetura, Artes e Tecnologias da Informação
    Today´s projection art on public surfaces developed from the mutual approximation of painting, architecture, and lighting during centuries. The terms “Spatial Augmented Reality” (SAR) and “projection mapping” describe mostly temporary large screen projections on urban surfaces. The façade architecture becomes the screen for the content, mostly projected 2D and 3D animations. In essence, many of these artworks generate illusionistic clips deriving from the existing façade structure, allowing reality and fiction to merge audio visually. Artists, architects, curators, and institutions are increasingly aware of their responsibility related to this form of the mediatization of architecture, as shown, for example, by the Brazilian artist group Visualfarm. Their members approach their work as a counterpoint to the commercialization of public space in its appropriation by industry, propaganda, and advertising. But on the other hand, they also make a living from commercial assignments. Artists and architects often see themselves as pioneers and experimental researchers for possible developments in the coming digitized cities. By presenting various examples by selected artists like Corrie Francis Parks, Pablo Valbuena and Robert Seidel, the role of animation in connection with an alternative approach to the concepts of augmented realities within this process of social and urban evolution will be discussed. These artists try to integrate digital content into the cityscape in a harmonious sense.
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    Animating documentary modes : navigating a theoretical model for animated documentary practice
    (Lusofona University, 2018) Widdowson, Alex; Escola de Comunicação, Arquitetura, Artes e Tecnologias da Informação
    Music & Clowns is an animated documentary that intimately portrays the subjectivity and relationships between my brother, our parents, and myself. This film will function as a case study to facilitate a reflective exploration and practice-informed analysis of some of the theoretical frameworks relevant to animated documentary discourse. Placing emphasis on Bill Nichols’ modes of documentary, I trace the influences, interactions, and specific application that this theoretical topology has had on Music & Clowns. Expanding upon Nichols’ framework by way of visual metaphors, I develop increasingly sophisticated models of the interactions between practice and theory, maintaining Nichols’ topology to integrate live-action and animated documentary traditions.
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    Animating poetry: whose line is it anyway? : creation & critique of shared language in poetry animation
    (Lusofona University, 2019) Hanna, Susan J.; Escola de Comunicação, Arquitetura, Artes e Tecnologias da Informação
    This paper provides a detailed analysis of an example of personal practice in the creation of collaborative contemporary poetry animation as an example of Ecstatic Truth. It cites a rationale for translation, transcription and remodeling of poems into new animated visual and sonic experiences. This investigation into creation and critique of shared language between poetry and animation includes critical commentary and some historical context, as well as supplying comparative exemplars from poets, animators and collaborators. It suggests that poetry animation is an emergent genre in its own right, and that this has expanding potential for engaging specialist and non-specialist audiences.
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    Animation Documentaries and Biodiversity Issues – is ‘Plant blindness’ a concept worth keeping? Insights from the Portuguese animation documentary ‘Viagem a Cabo-Verde’ (2010)
    (Edições Universitárias Lusófonas, 2016) Lima, M. Alexandra Abreu; Escola de Comunicação, Arquitetura, Artes e Tecnologias da Informação
    From the contemporary panorama of creative media, the animation documentary A Journey to Cape Verde (2010, Viagem a Cabo Verde) is analysed in terms of its content concerning biodiversity and plant issues. The concept of ‘plant blindness’ is revisited, a term introduced by Wandersee and Schussler in 1998 (Allen, 2003) to describe “the inability to see or notice the plants in one’s own environment” and their importance in the biosphere. Some future considerations are discussed. It is hoped this casestudy displays a picture of what can be done to improve collective knowledge about biodiversity issues and could inspire and help others to develop awareness raising projects about them.
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    Animation documentaries and reality cross-boundaries
    (Edições Universitárias Lusófonas, 2016) Luz, Filipe Costa; Escola de Comunicação, Arquitetura, Artes e Tecnologias da Informação
    Filmmakers aim to deliver some emotional and aesthetic coin to their works, which makes it possible that the boundaries between fiction and documentary genres could be diluted artistically. The documentary is a recognized genre in film studies that is considered to move on one side of the boundary between fact and fiction. Michael Rabiger defends the objectivity and fairness of documentaries due to the expectation of the viewer to accept the photographic image as true (Rabiger, 1998, p. 6). Bill Nichols reinforces this idea evoking that the documentaries that best witness a certain theme are those in which filmmakers “don’t interfere”, classifying them as “observational documentaries”, as the examples from the images captured in World War II or the political TV news (Nichols, 1991, p. 38). Therefore, the challenge that we propose aims to relate the documentary live action characteristics with the animated images, where the veracity is just an animation reflection. To better illustrate the curious fusion of animation and documentary image, we will examine several emergent examples of this new “film genre”.
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    Autoethnographic animation and the metabolism of trauma
    (Lusofona University, 2021) Young, Susan; Escola de Comunicação, Arquitetura, Artes e Tecnologias da Informação
    This paper provides an overview of my practice-based doctoral research: Bearing Witness: Autoethnographic Animation and the Metabolism of Trauma, which uses a multimethod approach (cognitive focus, thematic analysis of qualitative data and artistic practice), to investigate autoethnographic animation’s capacity to moderate psychological trauma. Traumatic events such as child abuse, domestic violence and military conflict often present a major health challenge for survivors, with many experiencing significantly impaired function due to symptoms such as nightmares, emotional dysregulation, negative cognitions and dissociative states. The symptoms most commonly reported are intrusive memories-sensory-perceptual impressions that involuntarily intrude into consciousness, causing distress and a sense of reexperiencing the trauma. A number of cognitive studies have measured how these intrusions may be moderated through models that either interfere with imagery, simulate trauma, or change its narrative. My research uses interviews, thematic analysis and artistic practice to investigate whether animation may similarly moderate intrusions through processes that utilise the medium’s visuospatial capacities and its potential for rescripting, or changing, the trauma narrative. The desire to use personal experience as data motivated my interest in autoethnography as a methodology for qualitative inquiry. Autoethnography is a reflexive approach that explores autobiographical stories and connects these to wider socio-cultural-political issues through writing, performance and other media. In this research I am using autoethnography to both address my lived experience of trauma and to moderate its symptoms through my animation practice. Keywords: Psychological trauma, mental imagery, autoethnographic animation, artistic research, mixed methods
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    C: (Maintenance) animation is a drag : it takes all the f****** time*
    (Lusofona University, 2021) Mc Hardy, Orla; Escola de Comunicação, Arquitetura, Artes e Tecnologias da Informação
    Animation and motherhood are parallel acts. There are striking overlaps between animation practices and the maternal time of maintenance and caregiving: repetitive acts and gestures, interruption, incremental and elongated time, the embodied experience of slow mundane practices, the durational drag of staying alongside something or someone. The pooled time of caregiving and maintenance, and the pooled time of animation production have a lot in common. In this paper, I want to pull apart some of the ways that an expanded animation practice-as-research shows how animation’s formal self-reflexiveness and media specific histories can start to reveal where value is placed (and not placed) on the time of their shared invisible labours. Possibilities emerge from thinking these invisible labours together, revealing the problematics of what constitutes a rightful subject or object of mothering, and what can be said to constitute animation. Keywords: Expanded Animation, Sculpture, Caregiving, Care, Maintenance, Feminism
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    Concrete abstract : exploring tactility in abstract animations from early avant-garde films to contemporary artworks
    (Edições Universitárias Lusófonas, 2021) Siray, Basak Kaptan; Escola de Comunicação, Arquitetura, Artes e Tecnologias da Informação
    After witnessing social chaos and the collapse of values at the beginning of the twentieth century, avant-garde artists insert new thought patterns and progressive aesthetic into the traditional perception of art. Being enthralled by the new film medium, former painters like Viking Eggeling, Walther Ruttman and Hans Richter start to experiment with light in two-dimensional film formats, they animate lines, stripes, basic shapes, play with the foreground and the background, and, most important of all, they construct a temporality within the visual order of the screen. Viking Eggeling’s Symphonie Diagonale (1921-24), Walther Ruttman’s Opus I (1921) and Hans Richter’s Rhythmus 21 (1921) show such temporality built in, which is caught by the idea of music as their titles suggest. These short abstract animation films attempt to discover the artistic possibilities of the new developing medium, film. Like the pioneer avant-garde abstract filmmakers, today’s artists still seek to stimulate a new perception for a possible embodiment that will activate the sense of touch in the audience. Tactility, enhanced by the material, opens up a new network of spatio-temporal relationships in the viewer’s consciousness and subjecthood. This essay aims to bring a historical perspective to the abstract moving images of which the tactile or haptic experience is a defining characteristic. Through a selection of abstract animations, the materiality of the film image and the screening site will be elaborated upon according to the haptic features that are corporally embodied by the viewers. In the light of historical abstract animation, the aim is to dwell upon the dynamics of a continuous tendency to capture tactile instances to help bring forth the spatial resonances as well as visualize and reedify the rhythmic passing of time.
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    Cornish knitting pattern series
    (Lusofona University, 2019-12-31) Nightingale, Jennifer; Escola de Comunicação, Arquitetura, Artes e Tecnologias da Informação
    The Cornish Knitting Pattern Series is a collection of 16mm animation landscape films that use a single frame production technique to translate Guernsey knitting patterns into film. In doing so, the films set up a structural relationship between that of a knitted stitch and a frame of film—drawing out analogies between both forms of production. The article considers methods and processes of the films’ production, including the role of the film charts and location-as-editing system. The film charts are explored as examples of an approach to systems-based editing and a single frame production in the context of experimental film. They are also discussed as visualizations of the knitting patterns; pragmatic preproduction material; notation documentation and retrospectively a significant aid to reflection on the work carried out. Key aspects of the film series such as how gesture, landscape and film are ‘knitted together’ in the film as a material object, are also highlighted. Further to this the article explores how these aspects reveal readings of the films’ relationship to Landscape, knitting practices and the historical and cultural aspects of the Cornish Guernsey patterns.
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    Drawing the unspeakable understanding ’the other’ through narrative empathy in animated documentary
    (Edições Universitárias Lusófonas, 2016) Nåls, Jan Erik; Escola de Comunicação, Arquitetura, Artes e Tecnologias da Informação
    How to represent the suffering of distant others? An international exchange program between Africa and Europe was set up in 2006 to tackle this issue with the help of documentary filmmaking. A result was A Kosovo Fairytale (2009), a case study of how animated documentary can provide insights in how to represent ‘the other’. Theories of narrative empathy inform the understanding of the process as well as the final film. This paper examines animated documentary from three distinct perspectives: as a pedagogical tool to enhance cultural understanding, as a process of narrative empathy, and as a coherent text which makes use of narrative strategies endemic to animated documentary in order to create emotional engagement. Conclusions suggest that animated documentary can be a novel way of representing the other, especially if narrative empathy is present throughout a production process, and that the process involves participatory elements where the subjects contribute to the narrative.
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    Ethnographic animation : participatory design with the Longhorn Maio
    (Lusofona University, 2018) Wang, Yijing; Escola de Comunicação, Arquitetura, Artes e Tecnologias da Informação
    This research proposes animation as a form of ethnographic documentary, exploring animation’s potential to document the underrepresented cultures (e.g. oral culture) of minorities. Drawing upon a critical analysis of the approaches and methods used in animated documentaries that involve minority issues, alongside preliminary studies of the Longhorn Miao, this project will result in an animated documentary that explores aspects of the cultural practices the group undertakes. This project’s contribution to knowledge lies in expanding the use of animation as an innovative form of ethnographic documentary, defining an emerging territory of ethnographic animation and expanding of participatory design principles to represent the Longhorn Miao people.
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    Hitting where it hurts : absurdity as an artistic method
    (Lusofona University, 2021) Jutz, Gabriele; Escola de Comunicação, Arquitetura, Artes e Tecnologias da Informação
    This article frames absurdity as an artistic method related to the context of an artwork’s making. The artworks introduced here are (very broadly) situated at the interface between animation and documentary. Their absurdity is not a matter of their content, but is deeply inscribed in the process of their making. Though they do not explicitly address political questions, they strike at the heart of given power systems or established hierarchies and thus hit where it hurts. “Make it absurd!” is a way of transgressing standards and norms and thus undermining established power relations. The article offers close-readings of a small number of contemporary artworks that can be apprehended as stimulating examples of how absurdity as a method deploys its critical potential. As the examples demonstrate, disrupting a given context can be achieved in many ways: By “inflating” formal devices in order to subvert typical elements of televisual language from inside-out (House by Andy Birtwistle, Great Britain 2013); by rendering a source text (and not just any text!) literally unreadable by investing an enormous amount of time to its dismantling (‘On the Road’ by Jack Kerouac by Jorge Lorenzo, Mexico 2013); by hijacking a male masterpiece and placing the “copy” as well as the female appropriator at the same level as the “master” (A Movie by Jen Proctor by Jen Proctor, USA 2010); by demonstrating that the technique of animation itself bears the mark of the absurd (Anna Vasof’s series of works, gathered under the headings of Non-stop Stop-motion and Muybridge’s Disobedient Horses, Austria, 2017–); and finally, via a method called “slapstick avant-garde,” by launching an attack on purist self-restraint (Dont Know What by Thomas Renoldner, Austria 2019). Keywords: Absurdity as an artistic method, appropriation, animation, slapstick.
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    Notes towards the use of a documentary approach in the teaching of animation
    (Edições Universitárias Lusófonas, 2016) Serrazina, Pedro; Escola de Comunicação, Arquitetura, Artes e Tecnologias da Informação
    Since its early days, animation film has always reflected its cultural context at the time of creation. Nevertheless, it is still widely perceived as kid’s entertainment. Reflecting on practical examples and teaching methodologies, this text argues for a practice of animation which, by adhering to documentary strategies, engages with real issues, leaving behind the traditional Disney/anime/fantasy/ game-inspired references that frame most of the animation students’ intentions at the beginning of their path. Rather than a matter of technique, and regardless of the much debated issue of realism, this text suggests that a teaching framed by a documentary approach, bringing questions of identity and social perspective to the core of the practice, reinforces animation as a thoughtful and participative role in the contemporary moving image debate.
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    Painting with light : artistic experiments into the use of virtual reality as an animation production environment
    (Lusofona University, 2021) Wastyn, Gert; Escola de Comunicação, Arquitetura, Artes e Tecnologias da Informação
    While many researchers have examined the technical characteristics of using VR as a production environment for animation, its artistic potential has only sporadically been investigated. We want to contribute to this line of thought through reflection on a number of expanded animation workshops organized in the context of the Painting With Light project. In this paper we use flow theory in order to discuss the experience of using VR as a 3D prototyping tool. Our findings suggest that this practice can add an improvisatory and co-creative dimension to animation.
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    Poetics of seriality : socialist architecture in eastern european animation
    (Lusofona University, 2021) Rogoff, Jana; Escola de Comunicação, Arquitetura, Artes e Tecnologias da Informação
    This article reflects on the ways in which animation critically engages with the transformation of city spaces and hence with politics of space more generally. Works of Polish and Czechoslovak animators, namely Hieronim Neumann, Zbigniew Rybcziński, Jiří Barta, and Zdeněk Smetana, serve as examples of animated films that address the phenomenon of urban development in the former Eastern Bloc. Through these examples, I examine how the dominant model of architecture between 1950 and 1990— the prefabricated concrete housing project—figured in cinematic narratives of the pre-digital era. Animation engaged with the transformation of city spaces on multiple levels: in terms of aesthetics (designs, interiors, surfaces), production modes (seriality, compression, simultaneity), and sociopolitical issues. Understanding what we might today call “serial aesthetics” alongside the social concerns that these works of animation raised provides us with a valuable historical perspective on the medium as a platform for negotiating the boundaries and overlaps between public, personal, and political spaces.
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    Re-animating ghosts : materiality and memory in hauntological appropriation
    (Lusofona University, 2019-12-31) Schofield, Michael Peter; Escola de Comunicação, Arquitetura, Artes e Tecnologias da Informação
    This research examines the spectrality of animation and other media based on the photographic trace. Using diverse examples from popular culture and the author’s own investigative practice in media art, this paper looks at how archival media is re-used and can be brought back to life in new moving image works, in a gesture we might call hauntological appropriation. While sampling and re-using old materials is nothing new, over the last 15 years we have seen an ongoing tendency to foreground the ghostly qualities of vintage recordings and found footage, and a recurrent fetishisation and simulation of obsolete technologies. Here we examine the philosophies and productions behind this hauntological turn and why the materiality of still and moving image media has become such a focus. We ask how that materiality effects the machines that remember for us, and how we re-use these analogue memories in digital cultures. Due to the multimodal nature of the author’s creative practice, photography, video art, documentary film and animation, are interrogated here theoretically. Re-animating the ghosts of old media can reveal ontological differences between these forms, and a ghostly synergy between the animated and the photographic.
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    Shades of invisibility
    (Lusofona University, 2021) Pearce, Sally; Escola de Comunicação, Arquitetura, Artes e Tecnologias da Informação
    Shades of Invisibility is an ongoing experimental artist’s documentation of my practice in making Chernobyl Journey, an activist film that I have been working on for twelve years. In Chernobyl Journey live action tells the story of my four trips to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone between 2009 and 2015 in search of rare Przewalski Horses, while animation is used to subversively unravel this apparently straightforward and chronological story backwards, tracing my fascination for the Exclusion Zone back to memories of an acute and life-changing illness in my own timeline from May to August 1986. In the film, animation is used not only to portray my inner private world of sensations, emotions and memories, but also to trace the slow process of arriving at self-knowledge through unravelling invisibilities of a very external and political nature. However, it is not the animation itself that makes the film experimental and subversive, but the way in which the animation is intimately woven into the live action footage. Through methods of compositing and blending, a counter historical narrative is inscribed into the fabric and the forbidden spaces of the two landscapes my auto-ethnographic story inhabits. As well as providing an outlet for my counter historical auto-ethnographic story, Chernobyl Journey also debunks the myth that nature will spring back like a lightly trodden on blade of grass, even after the worst excesses of human exploitation, extraction and environmental disaster. Shades of Invisibility is informed and inspired by my reading of New Materialist texts, in particular Jane Bennett’s ‘Vibrant Matter’. In the text I attempt to explore the efficacy of agencies other than my own will upon my art, using invisibility as a linking theme to create a network of interlocking pathways into subject matter that is dense, multi-layered, interdisciplinary, complex and sometimes politically taboo. My approach to documentation is activist in itself, as it questions the hylomorphic and anthropocentric world view that underpins auteur theory. I argue that this model of creativity based on the unrestrained and unaccountable power of the human individual’s will mirrors the neo-liberal model of unrestrained extractive capitalism that is contributing so much to our present reality of climate crisis, loss of species diversity and global injustice. Keywords: Activist, Chernobyl, Invisibility, Vitalism, Animation.