9:30 am

Keynote Robert Seidel

Breaking Frames – Do Digital Artists dream of Electric Brushes? 

The visual research efforts of the animation industry are mainly focussed on simulating photorealistic imagery or emulating classical animation techniques. Each little detail of the physical world is taken and abstracted into tools, which allow more realistic films and games to be created. Instead of exploring the unlimited possibilities of animation itself, this focus on a precise visual representation frequently results in “Uncanny Valley” moments and labour-intense but lifeless works. Starting with my film „grau“(2004) I aimed to break these conceptual frameworks of animation, expanding them by appropriating digital tools and combining them with approaches of scientific visualisation. These collages of “unseen” but coherent worlds are part of my artistic research, which slowly penetrated the real world with my video installations and large-scale projections. While trying to branch out into different fields I realized that the highly different paths of research in the natural sciences, digital image processing and contemporary art rarely intersect. Exponentially growing complexities manifest this separation, but interestingly in recent years the power of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning was catered to a wider audience through the “learning” of artistic styles of painting. These pastiche works mostly ignore art history beyond the visual level and use a superficial understanding of “abstract art” as an identifier. So the freedom established in the arts is used as an excuse for instable scientific results, while the algorithms and machines are not powerful enough to simulate the real world yet. To frame this absurd situation heretically: Would we see this explosion of Machine Learning today, if the decades of avant-garde movements had not happened? What power will artists gain with these new tools? How could we establish a fruitful exchange between scientists and artists? And how can an artist make sense of all these contradictions? Expect more questions than answers from this keynote

Robert Seidel (http://www.robertseidel.com)

11:00 am

The Animator as the Artist-Scientist Archetype

Sorin Oancea

With work spanning engineering, architecture, biology, anatomy and painting and sculpture, Leonardo Da Vinci remains to this day not only a universal cultural icon but also a fascinating embodiment of the Jungian artist-scientist archetype. It can be said that, curiosity led Leonardo towards a multilayered investigation in the very nature of reality and its natural laws that included image making at the core of it.

Similarly, in its aim to recreate and seemingly transcend a stubbornly ‘impoverished’ reality through increasingly immersive imagery, the animation artist can be described as the contemporary manifestation of the artist-scientist archetype, by using a medium that while artistic is emerging from centuries of scientific discovery and innovation.

Analysing the Jungian archetype of the artist-scientist, this paper discusses the animator’s art and craft in contempporary culture, compares it to Gene Youngblood’s ‘designer scientist’ concept and frames animation as a method of investigation of our world.

Short Bio.

Sorin Oancea – Lecturer at Queensland University of Technology, teaching in 3D Animation, Film and Animation History and Drawing for Animation.

PHD Candidate researching Holography and Immersive Cinematic Narratives using Holographic Effects. Prior to this position, Sorin worked in the animation industry as Animator, Writer, Series Director for Children television and advertising.

Contact: s.oancea@qut.edu.au

11:30 am

Understanding Cinematic Motion

Philippe Vaucher

Fundamental to film and animation is the fact that the illusion of realistic smooth motion can be created by the display of a sequence of still images. The illusion of cinematic motion is of great interest to both psychologists and animators. Psychologists want to understand how it works with regard to perception. Animators who often have to create each individual image want to know how to achieve believable motion efficiently. The traditional explanation for the illusion of smooth motion is the theory of persistence of vision, but scientists dispelled the theory as false in the 1970s.

This paper will attempt to present a comprehensive portrait of the different types of motion and perceptual illusions used in animated film, animatics and motion comics. The historical roots of the myth will be presented. We will demonstrate that, while persistence of vision creates a picture collage on the retina, the perception of motion itself is a cognitive process that occurs in the brain.

We will then introduce the two principles involved in cinematic motion perception. First, critical flicker fusion will explain why a projected film does not flicker. Secondly, short-range apparent motion (also called beta motion or the fine grain illusion) will explain the perception of continuous motion. We will differentiate beta motion from the phi phenomenon, because the terms are often confused in the literature and will discuss how induced motion is used in walk cycles and camera moves. We will present Ramachandran and Anstis’s laws of motion and explain the important interaction between movement and form in perception and animation.

We will conclude by stating that a crossdisciplinarity approach to the study of perceptual phenomena may benefit both animation and psychology. Not only do animation studies profit from a better understanding of the cognitive mechanisms and principles that animate the art, psychologists, who often study isolated phenomena through careful experimentation, may benefit from what animators have learned through years of practice. As such it is mutually beneficial for both animation and psychology to take a peek at what lies behind the doors of perception.

Key words:

Animation, phi phenomena, beta motion, critical flicker fusion, motion perception, apparent motion, fine grain illusion, cognitive science, persistence of vision.

 

Name: Philippe Vaucher

Email: philippe.vaucher@uqat.ca

Affiliation: Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue (UQAT)

Department of Creation and New Media in Montreal

Position: Assistant Professor in New Media

12:00 pm

Insufficient Data as Artistic Impression, Exemplified by the Gone Garden VR Experience

Benjamin Seide, Elke Reinhuber, Ross Williams

School of Art, Design and Media / Nanyang Technological University

81 Nanyang Drive, Singapore

bseide@ntu.edu.sg, elke@ntu.edu.sg, rawilliams@ntu.edu.sg

 

In this paper, we outline how we have embraced the unique aesthetics of purposefully flawed photogrammetry from insufficient data to provide an impressionistic experience for a virtual heritage application.

Over the last decade, photogrammetry and laser scanning have become particularly useful for 3D reconstruction in the context of visual effects and virtual heritage applications. 3D reconstruction is the process of utilising data captured from real environments or objects to create a scientifically accurate virtual representation. Although even inexperienced users can achieve impressive results, still, flawed reconstructions occur when for example insufficient data is being provided. Naturally, one would discard such inaccurate reconstruction, but arguably such glitches embody a certain aesthetic, by telling a different story.

The initiative for this artistic research derived from the announced refurbishment of a Chinese Garden in Singapore. Our project generated the 360° film »Secret Detours«, experiments with CG animation and Visual Effects as a form of visual interpretation, as well as a 3D reconstruction of the site as a Virtual Reality environment. During the production, the redevelopment of the actual site confronted us with the disappearance of the garden as we knew it. We, as a group of researchers and artists, decided to explore possibilities of how to visualise the transience of the garden and its transformation from the beautifully arrangement of trees, flowers, pavilions and pathways to a deconstructed, semi-chaotic, broken state with piles of soil, tree trunks and wilderness taking over.

Our project »Gone Garden« explores the use of photogrammetry as a tool to create a non-realistic, impressionistic representation from data captured at the actual heritage site for the purpose of an emotional and aesthetic interpretation. We argue, that beyond the preservation aspect of virtual heritage, artistic interpretations can benefit the audience’s involvement by creating an emotional experience.

 

Mr Benjamin Seide

Associate Professor ADM / NTU Singapore
www.ataribaby.de

Benjamin Seide, educator, researcher and media artist, lives in Singapore and Berlin and researches in the field of animation and immersive media. In the 1990s, Seide shot his first interactive 360° film with a self-developed camera. His work as a visual effects artist from the 2000s contributed to Arthouse and Hollywood films, including Wim Wender’s “Don’t Come Knocking”, Roman Polanski’s “Oliver Twist” and Martin Scorsese’s “Hugo”. Currently his projects investigate artistic interpretation of cultural and film heritage in immersive media.

 

Dr Elke Reinhuber

Assistant Professor ADM / NTU Singapore

www.eer.de

German media artist, researcher and educator Elke Reinhuber teaches currently at the School of Art, Design and Media at NTU Singapore. Her interest in immersive representations of architectural cultural heritage via digital media started in the early days of laser scanning and panoramic imaging with QuickTime VR for web and interactive museum installations. Her award winning artistic research was presented internationally, at conferences, exhibitions, group shows and festivals such as V&A Digital Futures in London, ZKM Centre for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany, Museum für Fotografie, Winterthur, Switzerland, Bozar Brussels and Manifesta Palermo, Italy.

 

Dr Ross Adrian Williams

Assistant Professor ADM / NTU Singapore

www.fluidsound.com

Australian composer/sound designer Ross Adrian Williams has written music and designed sound across a range of styles for theatre, feature film, concert hall, dance, museum installation, VR and interactive media. Most recently his works for award-winning films have been shown in festivals around the world. His research interests range from implementation of audio stimuli to improve the effectiveness of robotic motor training and improving the detection of volcanic events in infrasound to multichannel sound design for experimental film. Currently, his research has been concerned with sound and cultural heritage in Virtual Reality / 360° video.

12:30 pm

Affect and Objectivity in Life Science Animation Films

Bettina Papenburg

Senior Research Associate

Institute of Media and Cultural Studies,

Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg

bettina.papenburg@mkw.uni-freiburg.de

 

Affect is at odds with the conception of science as a rational practice, hinging on the principles of objectivity, validity, and reliability, which is conducted by a detached and disinterested observer. In animation films employed in contemporary Anglophone life science research and education, the paradigm of objectivity is rendered visually palpable through a specific spatial, optical and ideological arrangement that I call “the microscopical apparatus”. The microscopical apparatus mimics a configuration from the experimental context of laboratory practice, one that puts viewers into a hierarchical relationship vis-à-vis their objects of investigation: viewers sitting arrested in front of a microscope, navigating through various diagrammatical forms of representation to investigate the structures and functions of living matter taken out of context and exposed to the scientific gaze at different levels of magnification. Films such as X Inactivation and Epigenetics (Australia, 2012, Animation: Etsuko Uno, Art and Technical Direction: Drew Berry), which I shall take as my analytical focus, conjure up this specific spacio-optico-ideological arrangement in tandem with popular cultural tropes. While the primary purposes of such animation films that take molecular life as their topic are to help form hypotheses and to provide insight into molecular processes, which are too small for the naked eye to see and too minuscule for imaging technologies – such as electron microscopy – to visualize, these films also spark curiosity in their viewers by involving them affectively. Using 3D animation tools developed in the context of the Hollywood entertainment industry, X Inactivation cites motifs and borrows forms of movement, color schemes and techniques of montage both from early scientific and experimental film and from popular film genres. By evoking affect-laden cultural tropes that instigate awe, joy and excitement, X Inactivation directs its viewers’ attention to enable concept formation and to facilitate understanding of complex intra-cellular processes. Analyzing the audio-visual rhetoric of X Inactivation, this paper seeks to demonstrate that it is the combination of a visual regime that creates distance with an affectivelycharged cultural repertoire that renders the staging of scientific knowledge compelling. This rhetoric opens up questions about realism and how animation transforms notions of documentary.

 

Short CV:

Bettina Papenburg (PhD, MSc) is Senior Research Associate at the Institute of Media and Cultural Studies at Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg, Germany. She was Research Associate at the Institute of Media and Cultural Studies at Heinrich-Heine-

University Dusseldorf (2013-2017) and Assistant Professor in the Graduate Gender Programme at Utrecht University (2011-2013). She held a Marie Skłodowska Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Department of Media and Cultural Studies at Utrecht University (2009-2011). Her research interests lie at the intersection of theories of difference, affect and the body, visual culture, gender and queer studies, science and technology studies, and the grotesque. She is author of The New Flesh. The Grotesque

Body in the Cinema of David Cronenberg (in German, 2011) as well as of numerous articles and book chapters. She is co-editor of Carnal Aesthetics: Transgressive Imagery and Feminist Politics (IB Tauris, 2013), a special issue of Discourse: Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture on “Motion Pictures. Politics of Perception” (2014), a special section of Catalyst. Feminism, Theory, Technoscience on “The Processes of Imaging – the Imaging of Processes” and editor of the Macmillan Handbook Gender: Laughter (2017). She is currently working on a monograph tentatively entitled “Affect and Evidence: Visualizations in the Life Sciences and Popular Culture.”

2:00 pm

Superstructure Playgrounds: Re-Animating Hong Kong’s Architecture

Dr Max Hattler

Assistant Professor, School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong

mhattler@cityu.edu.hk

 

Hong Kong’s high-density, high-rise cityscape has been much documented through photography. Photography presents a fixed representation of the built environment, which makes it an ideal medium to capture the immense scale of the repetitive patterns of buildings. Stylized and impressive, this has itself become a stereotype of Hong Kong, ready to be consumed by tourists and Instagrammers. Photography-based experimental moving image has the potential to create different engagements with Hong Kong’s signature architecture that go beyond such fixed representation. By manipulating their source images these films transpose their subject matter into new kinetic configurations. The Doors (Chilai Howard 2008) presents a rhythmical choreography of opening and closing doors of a public housing estate, while in Ray Mok and Red Wong’s Iam Twisq (2018) music video for Isan high-rise buildings are turned into a colourful urban playground. Serial Parallels (Max Hattler 2019) applies the technique of film animation to the photographic image, reimagining the city’s housing estates as parallel rows of film strips, or serial parallels. Here, what was fixed becomes fluid, through the spatio-temporal sequencing of architectural patterns. Through such processes, new visual and temporal relationships are forged, and new meaning is created, through which new perspectives on the city emerge.

 

Max Hattler is a moving image artist and academic interested in the relationships between abstraction and figuration, aesthetics and politics, sound and image, and precision and improvisation. He holds an MA in Animation from the Royal College of Art and a Doctorate in Fine Art from the University of East London. His work has been shown at festivals and institutions such as Resonate, Ars Electronica, ZKM Center for Art and Media, MOCA Taipei and Beijing Minsheng Museum. Awards include Supernova, Cannes Lions, Bradford Animation Festival and several Visual Music Awards. He is an Assistant Professor at the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong. Max’s current research focuses on synaesthetic experience and visual music, the narrative potential of abstract animation, and expanded artistic approaches to binocular vision.

2:30 pm

Processuality, Metagaming, and Metaprogramming in Doki Doki Literature Club!

Raphael Zähringer, University of Tübingen, raphael.zaehringer@uni-tuebingen.de

Abstract: the paper discusses the video game Doki Doki Literature Club! (2017) in the context of games as processes (Malaby 2007) and more general, large-scale complexes usually referred to as ‘theory.’ In a first step, it outlines the typical process of playing Doki Doki Literature Club!, which starts as a rather dating simulator that makes use of rather conventional gameplay mechanics in the sense of nodal structures of future narratives (Bode 2012) or contingent outcomes to players’ actions. The game then suddenly turns into a horror game and  – more importantly – a metagame, at which point the game deliberately refuses to accept its players’ decisions as one character in particular communicates her realization that she is in a game. This reduction of agency, however, simultaneously opens up a new level of play as the game then demonstrates its concern with computer science: the self-aware character encourages the player to tamper with certain game files not only in order to change the course of the game but also to unlock a new level of paratextual gaming (Harvie 2007) in the first place. After this, playing the game is free to continue even further as a transmedia experience on, for instance, Twitter (alongside wikis, merchandise, bonus artwork, and mods).

Thus – as will be demonstrated in a second step – Doki Doki Literature Club! takes to extremes the typical process gamers undergo whenever they pick up a game. Even more to the point, the game thus also maps the large-scale territory of the gaming industry (as indicated by the final letter hidden in the game’s ‘good’ ending by its author), as well as of theory in the humanities along the coordinates of textual theory, metatheory, critical theory, and cultural theory (Reinfandt/Middeke 2016). Thus, the game not only reflects on the nature of games as ludic installations but also as philosophical or scientific projections of programming and epistemology.

3:00 pm

Resurrecting the Archive

Using Digital Technologies to Bring Animation Collections to Life.

Steve Henderson and Damon Markey

As a bourgeoning field of study, animation archives and by extension animation archiving is the practice of managing collections of objects produced during the process of creating animated works such as cels, puppets, scripts, sketches and storyboards, as opposed to the completed audio-visual output (i.e. the film) itself.

There are many challenges that traditional animated filmmaking objects such as animation cels and puppets present as they consist of materials that commonly degrade after their primary use. As mixed media artefacts (Barbagallo, 2011) animation puppets vary in size, shape and material presenting challenges in traditional preservation.

As this paper concentrates its efforts on innovations pertaining to the archiving of puppet animation materials using 3D scanning techniques. This would a digital copy of the model for cataloguing purposes. The creation of a digital archive of materials provides digital duplicates of fragile artefacts that can be accessed without risking damage to originals. Data collected through the scanning process creates subsequent metadata possibilities such as the mass, mathematically accurate measurements, and exact colour information. Digital models created in the scanning process would have the potential to be exhibited through digital and additive manufactured methods.

There are digital capture issues around construction materials. Techniques to be evaluated to deal with these issues include: Photogrammetry, and 3D laser scanning. Balancing these techniques whilst establishing parameters and guidance for their use with different model types is one outcome of this project.

Beyond artefact capture, the craft processes could be recorded and retooled using digital capture

techniques. Examples include recreation of model moulds, and volumetric capture of the craft process; Here a 3D visual recording of an artist working through their process is captured so that the techniques and approach utilised are recorded for future generations to see as if looking over the shoulder of the craftsperson. Extending these digitised models, they could be re-rigged using the original armatures and re-animated using modern animation tools or re-packaged through mobile apps or AR/VR/MR to allow modern audiences to interact with and animate the models combining art and technology.

 

Dr Steve Henderson

Manchester School of Art

Biography

Steve Henderson is Senior Lecturer in Animation at Manchester School of Art as well as the co-owner and Editor of Skwigly Online Animation Magazine, a resource producing written content, podcasts, videos and reviews covering the entire scope of the industry. He is also director of Manchester Animation Festival, the UK’s largest animation festival. Animation exhibitions he has curated include Reanimating The Snowman, a journey through of the production material from the film and it’s 2012 sequel with Arts University Bournemouth and Mackinnon and Saunders: Origins, an exhibition of photographic material from the model making studio. His 2017 PhD thesis focussed on British Children’s Television Animation and Animation Archives, an area which he has involvement and expertise in preserving, promoting and protecting.

s.henderson@mmu.ac.uk

 

Damien Markey

Email: d.markey@mmu.ac.uk

Manchester School of Art, Manchester Metropolitan University

Senior Lecturer, BA Animation

Bio: Senior Lecturer in Higher Education with specialisms in Visual Effects and Computer Graphics. I have designed and written several HE courses including Special/Visual Effects as well as undertaking Course Leadership duties at UK Universities. Produced and delivered bespoke courses in Media Production and Visual Effects at European Universities. My pedagogic interests are in the area of course development and enhancement whilst my research activities cover digital archiving, restoration and re-purposing of Animation and Special Effects artefacts by combining 3D print, scanning, VR and AR technologies.