Okay - a follow-up from yesterday's feedback. It was difficult to discern the 'issue' you were seeking to explore, but it sort of boiled down to an issue of aesthetics and their reception - so a perceived difference between 2D animation as a 'drawn' and therefore as an 'art practice' and 3D animation as registering as something else - something 'less'. You also seemed to be getting into a debate about the value of realism - or realistic-ness - as it compares with stylisation, as it plays out in animation. So, for me, it further boils down to the relationship between representation and technology - i.e. what impact does technology have on how we represent the world - so there's a constellation of related ideas here: aesthetics, representation, realism vs reality, & technology. It did seem as if you were seeking to argue that 'drawing' as mode of animation has a quality or a 'superiority' over and above CGI animation, and if this is the case, then I think this 'conflict' finds its historical context in the 'crisis of representation' triggered by the invention of the camera - and how the ability for the new tech too depict the world with 'total realism' challenged painters in terms of their relevancy and ability to continue to speak to the human experience with any accuracy or precision.
Some people to read/consider then: Andre Bazin on photography:
"In achieving the aims of baroque art, photography has freed the plastic arts from their obsession with likeness. Painting was forced, as it turned out, to offer us illusion and this illusion was reckoned sufficient unto art. Photography and the cinema on the other hand are discoveries that satisfy, once and for all and in its very essence, our obsession with realism. No matter how skillful the painter, his work was always in fee to an inescapable subjectivity. The fact that a human hand intervened cast a shadow of doubt over the image. Again, the essential factor in the transition from the baroque to photography is not the perfecting of a physical process (photography will long remain the inferior of painting in the reproduction of colour); rather does it lie in a psychological fact, to wit, in completely satisfying our appetite for illusion by a mechanical reproduction in the making of which man plays no part. The solution is not to be found in the result achieved but in the way of achieving it."
Realism (as an aesthetic and art movement): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realism_(arts) Linda Nochlin: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B002RI9XIS/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
You may also find affinities by looking at hand-drawn animation as 'craft', because of its direct relationship to the hand of the maker and CGI animation as representing something 'less' or 'less human' - so looking at the debates between craft versus other kinds of making might be useful (the Benjamin essay re. aura will sync with this too).
Hey Beckie,
ReplyDeleteOkay - a follow-up from yesterday's feedback. It was difficult to discern the 'issue' you were seeking to explore, but it sort of boiled down to an issue of aesthetics and their reception - so a perceived difference between 2D animation as a 'drawn' and therefore as an 'art practice' and 3D animation as registering as something else - something 'less'. You also seemed to be getting into a debate about the value of realism - or realistic-ness - as it compares with stylisation, as it plays out in animation. So, for me, it further boils down to the relationship between representation and technology - i.e. what impact does technology have on how we represent the world - so there's a constellation of related ideas here: aesthetics, representation, realism vs reality, & technology. It did seem as if you were seeking to argue that 'drawing' as mode of animation has a quality or a 'superiority' over and above CGI animation, and if this is the case, then I think this 'conflict' finds its historical context in the 'crisis of representation' triggered by the invention of the camera - and how the ability for the new tech too depict the world with 'total realism' challenged painters in terms of their relevancy and ability to continue to speak to the human experience with any accuracy or precision.
Some people to read/consider then: Andre Bazin on photography:
"In achieving the aims of baroque art, photography has freed the plastic arts from their obsession with likeness. Painting was forced, as it turned out, to offer us illusion and this illusion was reckoned sufficient unto art. Photography and the cinema on the other hand are discoveries that satisfy, once and for all and in its very essence, our obsession with realism. No matter how skillful the painter, his work was always in fee to an inescapable subjectivity. The fact that a human hand intervened cast a shadow of doubt over the image. Again, the essential factor in the transition from the baroque to photography is not the perfecting of a physical process (photography will long remain the inferior of painting in the reproduction of colour); rather does it lie in a psychological fact, to wit, in completely satisfying our appetite for illusion by a mechanical reproduction in the making of which man plays no part. The solution is not to be found in the result achieved but in the way of achieving it."
Walter Benjamin:
https://frankfurtschool.wordpress.com/2008/02/28/summary-the-work-of-art-in-the-age-of-mechanical-reproduction/
Realism (as an aesthetic and art movement):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realism_(arts)
Linda Nochlin:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B002RI9XIS/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
You may also find affinities by looking at hand-drawn animation as 'craft', because of its direct relationship to the hand of the maker and CGI animation as representing something 'less' or 'less human' - so looking at the debates between craft versus other kinds of making might be useful (the Benjamin essay re. aura will sync with this too).