Keynotes
Ed Atkins
Losslessness
Ed Atkins will introduce his work with animation, as well as his broader practice and media theory. Atkins’ videos and animations trace a dwindling gap between digital representation and corporeal experience, metaphorising the latter by underscoring the pathos of the former. Atkins’ wager is that if reality can be derealised by technologies of computer generation, artificial intelligence, algorithmic scripting, etc., it might also be rediscovered there. A brief introductory lecture will be followed by a conversation with Fred Truniger and a Q&A with the audience.
Erika Balsom
Bad Animation: The Computer-Generated Image in Contemporary Art
The title of this lecture should not be taken as a negative judgment against contemporary moving image artists such as Peggy Ahwesh, Ed Atkins, and Harun Farocki, who make use of computer-generated animation in their works, whether by appropriating existing images or fabricating their own. On the contrary, it borrows from curator Marcia Tucker’s notion of “bad painting,” a concept explored in her 1978 New Museum exhibition of the same name. For Tucker, “bad” painting was interesting painting, painting that flouted established norms. This talk will address how Ahwesh, Atkins, and Farocki adopt forms of computer animation that deliberately depart from industry standards, query pervasive aspirations to photorealism, and/or embrace an aesthetic of the generic template. With a special focus on the role of the detail in the representation of human bodies and natural landscapes, this talk will explore the meanings assigned to the animated image in these artists’ practices and probe how they use animation as a means to address broader questions of neoliberal subjectivity and the exercise of control over human and nonhuman life.
Chris Pallant
Rulers of the Unruly: Exploring the subject of Animated Landscapes through the work of Smallfilms
Smallfilms animation studio, co-founded and run by Oliver Postgate (writer, animator, director) and Peter Firmin (model-maker, illustrator, writer), has occupied a prominent place in British media history since 1959. Through productions such as Bagpuss, Clangers, Ivor the Engine, and Noggin the Nog, to name but a few, Smallfilms worked across hand-drawn, cut-out animation and model-based stop motion animation. With the 2015 reboot of Clangers, this animated register expanded to include elements of post-production digital manipulation. Across all of their many animated works, a constant tension – rooted in an unruliness – can be found in the development and regulation of Smallfilms’ animated landscapes.
This Keynote considers the unruliness of these animated landscape across three specific dimensions: pre-production, production, and post-production. Using the work of Smallfilms as a prism through which to consider the conference theme, it is hoped that the audience will gain a greater appreciation of the work of Smallfilms, while, in parallel, by employing the conference theme as a new lens through which to re-interrogate my own research on Smallfilms this will prompt a foregrounding of landscape as a critical dimension.
This Keynote will provide a chance to view rarely seen archival imagery, to analyse several influential – but internationally lesser known – Smallfilms productions, and will offer insights into the curatorial process that underpinned the creation of a new permanent Smallfilms exhibition at The Beaney House of Art and Knowledge (Canterbury, UK) – an exhibition that presented the work of Smallfilms in a richly multi-dimensional manner.
Peggy Schoenegge
Animation in Art
Peggy will give an introduction to the meaning of animation in contemporary digital art and online exhibitions. Presenting works of artists and online exhibitions, she elaborates on how the digital changes the approach to both, creating a new world of imagery and illustrating a shift of paradigms of traditions of art.
Talks
Panel 1: Dimensions of Classical Animation
Andrea Polywka
Un/real spaces – the art of Disney’s opening credits
The art of creating animated worlds already starts with the opening credits, as demonstrated by many animated films for the last decades. Mainly the Disney productions are depicting their own logo, the castle, as part of a marketing strategy of “un/real spaces” – situating and justifying fictional narratives in present entertainment structures, like the Disneyland Parks. The newest live action-adaptations, namely THE JUNGLE BOOK (US 2016), show an effort to integrate contemporary “state of the art” technical processes, in order to highlight the remake as part of the cosmos of Disney narratives and teleological progress of animation techniques. During my talk, I will argue that the introduction but also repetition of recognizable patterns and landmarks, stabilize but also monopolize the well-known “Disney Universe” by design layouts, color schemes, which create new ways of “hybrid spaces”. These spaces are foregrounding their own “Madeness” or fabrication, as Malte Hagener described the aesthetics of the Pixar opening credits, which will be part of a more detailed analysis and comparison during the talk.
Alexandra Novacov
Architecture of Death – Uncanny Spatial Explorations in BoJack Horseman
Hosted by a platform that encouraged experimentation, adult animated series such as BoJack Horseman (2014-2020) break away from conventions and revolutionize the form. This paper will demonstrate this claim by analyzing the show’s novel construction of spatial design.
Space in BoJack Horseman is layered and surreal, often ambiguous and disjointed. Examining complex themes like addiction, mental illnesses, and death, BoJack Horseman’s spatial composition becomes a symbolic manifestation of challenging psychological states, oscillating between real and unreal. This type of “architectural speculation on the peculiarly unstable nature of ‘house and home,’” described by Anthony Vidler as “spatial and architectural uncanny,” invites further interrogation on matters pervading the show such as “social and individual estrangement, alienation, exile, and homelessness” (Vidler in Buchan 375). I will showcase BoJack Horseman’s uncanny rendition of space by analyzing its worldbuilding, chromatic composition, anthropomorphic characters, referentiality, narrative composition, sound design, meta-commentary, and thematic predispositions. The show’s spatial and architectural uncanny culminates in “A View From Halfway Down” (S6Ep14). I will interpret this episode as a daring and sincere reflection on the inevitability of death, and an artistic statement that reveals at the core of animation’s artistic capabilities, an inherent, similarly uncanny tension between the movement as life and stillness as death.
Through this paper, I aim to present BoJack Horseman as emblematic of the current trend of adult animated series production and its potential to usher a new phase of development that moves beyond the postmodern nihilism and cynicism of the 2000s, prioritizing mature and sincere examinations of the various expressions of human vulnerability.
Panel 2: Emerging Animation Researchers
Emanuel Buholzer
Open source motion control for stop-motion
We are developing an open-source motion control system for stop-motion films at the Lucerne School of Art and Design. The motion control system in development enables students to do tracking shots with the help of a collaborative robot arm. The system offers haptic and digital interfaces to create these shots efficiently. Integrated into Blender with a real-time interface, students can use an interactive and precise 3D model to plan and test their shots. These shots can then be executed by Dragonframe or any other controller compatible with Arc Motion Control. The system is currently in its beta phase and serves as a foundation for further experiments and research on techniques such as digital production.
Julian Salhofer
Spatial audio for interactive applications as a control element for animations
Spatial audio technologies are increasingly inte- grated into a wide variety of applications in order to achieve the most immersive result possible. In the gaming and enter- tainment industries the use of 3D audio production methods inside of game engines for enhancing a player’s spatial sense of location is fairly common. This is particularly the case for virtual and augmented reality. In this presentation, however, two projects from other areas of application, namely interactive art installations and virtual reality in combination with art therapy will be highlighted and compared. Both examples (Kunsttherapie & VR, 2017, which is a commercial virtual reality application and Burning Trees, 2021, which is an interactive experience developed in cooperation with Eric Thalhammer) deal with the sonification and visualization of a virtual forest. While one of the examples fits into a very hyper-realistic category, a very abstract and musical form was chosen for the other. The latter is an interactive, site-specific art installation that models the relationship between humans and nature. The animation of the digital, generative forest is driven by spatial audio which is controlled by the recipients’ movements inside the room.
Ye Eun Kim
User-focused Storytelling for Virtual Reality: Strategies for Designing the Viewer’s Role and Identity
With the recent rise of immersive media, Virtual Reality (VR), a potent storytelling tool still in its infancy, presents numerous new opportunities and challenges simultaneously, derived from its novel features distinct from traditional forms of media. The viewer’s agency is one of the critical elements that differentiate this format from the classical media forms, allowing the viewer to decide how they experience the narrative – where to look or sometimes even where to drive the story. In this user-focused medium, the viewer can be a character of the story themselves or an observer invisible to the characters. They might be acknowledged by other characters but possess no power to make a decision, or they are able to interact with the scene to a great extent and affect the story outcome. Determining the viewer’s role and identity is an essential part of immersive storytelling, designing who they will be and what they will be capable of doing in the VR narrative. Different storytelling techniques and methods have to be considered in accord with different identities and levels of the agency to create more successful and seamless immersive experiences. Analysing four acclaimed animated storytelling in VR with a focus on the viewer’s role, this paper examines how different design of the viewer affects the way the viewer immerses themselves into the narrative and the narrative strategies used to generate the sense of immersion and presence effectively. On the basis of several previous studies on this topic, primarily referring to the concepts suggested by Bucher(2017) and Dooley(2021), this research suggests the different techniques used for directing the viewer’s attention, embodiment, viewer positioning, transition and some other element of immersive storytelling.
Simon Hochleitner, Florian Fiebiger and Sebastian Moritz
Digital Sensing
„Digital Sensing“ is a master’s project of four students at FH Hagenberg. Its dedication is to capture the human body with current digital mediums and transforming those medially.
The idea is to use AI technology to transform two-dimensional photography to three-dimensional bodies. Through the application of morphing algorithms new three-dimensional shapes are being discovered. The process of generating a three-dimensional body from the interpretation of the the data results in an animation that exists without external and individual influence.
The final result of this digital process is finally brought back into real space with the help of 3D printing technology. In the context of an exhibition, the results are juxtaposed and thus the process is made comprehensible.
Sabine Burchard
Observations concerning Animation for Live Events
During the preparation, realization, and review of the live performance project Saltina, I discovered some factors on how animation for live performance differs to animation for screen.
With the help of the project Saltina, aspects unique to projection design for live events are presented. These include the influence of the scale of the screening on the design and speed of the animation. Also, the attitude of an audience watching a spectacle, and how it influences the creation of imagery and the development of the narration is explored. Furthermore, the aspect of animation playing a role in a multimedia event is investigated. These observations will be illustrated through examples of work of myself and others.
Simon de Diesbach
Representations of nature in animation; technology used as a mean to convey political and poetic content
Representations of nature in animation are multiple. Technological tools, such as photogrammetry or 3D laserscan, can be used to represent images of nature to not only create innovative content, but also carry a political and a poetical message. This can be done by building a narration and a strong and sensitive aesthetics to the moving images, playing with the matter and the black matter, as well as with the contrast of the figurative and the void.
Panel 3: Theater and Public Space
Lana Tankosa Nikolic and Jakob Borrits Sabra
At the cross road of research, innovation, culture and business
In White Hole Theater we are developing a digital theater concept merging performing arts, XR, animation, gaming and interaction.
We are asking ourselves if we can change the premises for experiencing theater by merging the physical and the virtual presence and provide a space in the metaverse for different audience experiences with a high degree of interaction.
Our productions are being used as the case study for the research and development project Theater in Metaverse (TiM).
TiM is collaboration between White Hole Theater, represented by Late Love Production, the Department of Communication & Psychology, Center for Interactive Digital Media & Experience Design – Aalborg University (InDiMedia) and the Research and Development department at The Animation Workshop – VIA University College (TAW RnD).
In this talk, we will be diving into the mutual benefits of collaborating across educational institutions and professional corporations on innovative projects like the ones we are working on in White Hole Theater.
Juergen Hagler
Build your World – meaningful choices in a hybrid stage play
This paper examines the design of meaningful choices for theater audiences embedded in a hybrid play using digital tools and systems. A case study is presented that is established on a hybrid stage performance called ALIENATION based on the so-far unpublished eponymous novel by Corinna Antelmann, which premiered in early 2022, at the Landestheater Linz. The audience could take part in the performance via a real-time rendering engine. Apart from describing the case study in detail, we outline further applications and opportunities to facilitate audience participation and engagement. In general, ALIENATION’s design and production positively impacted the audience’s attention, especially regarding younger demographics.
Erwin Feyersinger
Projections and Screens as Animation of Public Spaces
Animation is an integral feature of many public spaces and public events, from the minimalist blinking neon lights in urban environments of the 20th century (e.g., on Times Square in New York) to a complete virtualization of architecture with enormous LED screens (e.g., the public art installation WAVE in Seoul in 2020) or large-scale projection mappings (e.g., the façade projection 555 KUBIK in Hamburg in 2009 or as part of the opening of the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro in 2016).
The paper theorizes these public forms of animation in terms of the following interrelated spatial and temporal concepts: site-specificity, ubiquity, and mobility of animation on the one hand and liveness, performance, and eventness of animation on the other hand. It connects projection mappings and public displays of animation and how they transform and virtualize physical spaces with theories of hybridity, urban screens, expanded cinema, and expanded animation.
Panel 4: Spatiality, Reality, Virtuality
Andres Montenegro and Audrey Ushenko
Using 2D and 3D interactive animations as an expanded narrative to render the pictorial and virtual simulation of Andrea Mantegna’s fresco The Wedding Chamber through a mixed reality environment installation
This 20-minute presentation will showcase how 2D and 3D animations are transformed in interactive devices to render an expanded (Gebner, 2019) animated cinematic simulation within an immersive environment that implements Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and Mixed Reality technologies. These 2D and 3D animations are part of the XR project Pictorial and Virtual Simulation of Andrea Mantegna’s fresco The Wedding Chamber (Montenegro, 2021). This installation artwork has recently been presented in the Artech Conference 2021 in Aveiro Portugal. Within this immersive experience, the animated narrative is based on the original fresco’s stories, and it is displayed in each of the walls of the virtual immersive room that simulate the original fresco. The virtual world developed by the installation, implements animated processes that play with illusion as a device to expand the fresco pictorial narrative beyond its formal physical boundaries, and revealing underlying subtexts (Oware, 2017), left by Andrea Mantegna as particular signatures of his mastery.
The presentation will include the animations making process, and the immersive environment experience using the AR/VR/MR system: Oculus Quest 2 headset, HTC VIVE Plus headset, and Microsoft HoloLens headset. The audience will be able to use, try or experience the immersive environment containing the 2D and 3D expanded animations.
Reinhold Bidner
Storycase -Telling stories with objects and augmented reality
Storycase is an AR-research-project by the artist group gold extra that artistically explores the narrative possibilities of AR with real objects: it tells stories of 5 objects found in the urban realm dealing with themes such as finding, losing, throwing away and reusing. An old typewriter, a shoe, a toy dinosaur, a wallet and a plastic cactus open up multiple perspectives that lead us, starting from personal find stories to larger social or historic contexts and the journey of objects across the globe. Storycase is an XR game project that combines AR with a media room-installation and participatory elements. Based on case studies and research, in the process of creating Storycase we came up with research questions that deal with the following topics: Storytelling in AR by combining objects in various settings / Collaboration in AR / Leaving traces for subsequent users / Animation in AR / Analog-digital interplays / Object Tracking – the current state / AR in museums. The presentation of our research is particularly aimed at colleagues and museum contexts in which AR applications are increasingly used.
Franziska Bruckner
The Spatiality of Cut-Out Animation in Virtual Environments
The art-based research project VRinMotion considers stop-motion as an experimental and artistic tool where conceptual characteristics unfold in time and space: As stop-motion vitalizes real objects in a fragmented way it is an ideal concept for a new artistic understanding of perception. From this perspective, stop-motion functions not as a technique but as an expanded concept that can be implemented into a virtual environment.
The combination of stop-motion and virtual environments has been investigated within various technical applications: Near-Field VR by the University of Southern California is integrated into the professional stop-motion software Dragon Frame. The research project Stop-Motion VR at the Film University Potsdam-Babelsberg uses photogrammetry, a technology that makes it possible to reconstruct three-dimensional models from a series of individual photographs. The AR App Doodle-Lens has also included stop-motion features. Examples of projects using VR stop-motion include Mad Dog (2016) by Phill Tippet, Nothing Happens VR (2017) by Michelle and Uri Kranot and The Orchid and the Bee by Frances McKenzies (2019), Gymnasia (2020) by Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski or Midnight Stories by Antonin Niclass (2022).
The paper presents the process and outcome of the project’s first artistic experiment “ExperiMotion One – Cut-out Animation” and concentrates on the following question: How can we create spatiality in a virtual environment with an animation technique that is flat in and of itself? ExperiMotion One has been established together with the animation artist Max Hattler and investigates the creation of artistic experiments to rapidly shaped animated 2D cut-out elements using traditional methods, as well as immediately embellishing them in a virtual space. These animations can appear at a micro-level (i.e., animated details of objects) or at a macro-level (i.e. animated environments). Traditional cut-out animation uses mostly analog frame-by-frame techniques to create movements. The filmic space is either created with a multi-layered animation table or digitally composed in post-production. However, most frameworks to create virtual, three-dimensional environments do not have the means to digitize those fragments in a rapid way and support the inception of 2D artwork into spatial surroundings. In these environments, the artist her/himself can continue the creative work by arranging, synchronizing, and modifying the animation timing of the particles, harnessing the flexibility of digital tools.
Panel 5: Animation Takes Space
François Chalet
Expanded Animation – goes educational
How can animation stretch towards more performative and installative areas? And which methods are used in an educational context to teach expanded animation?
I will give a short overview of my personal artistic work in the field of expanded animation.Then I will talk about the changing formats in the large field of expanded animation due to the upcoming new immersive and interactive technologies and how it impacts teaching. I will show some student work and talk about perspectives. The craft of animated movies builds the trunk and expanded animation forms the branches. Together this tree symbolizes the whole potential of animation. They build on each other and both need each other.
Frank Geßner
Fin Garden’s Pipes: Artistic research lecture performance
… my soul is a gushing fountain …
In 2019, Frank Geßner travelled to Iran and visited many places, including Bagh-e Fin. This revered garden is one of the oldest in Iran. It was completed around 1590 by the early Safavids. It features the typical “Chahar bagh” design of crossed watercourses, derived from verses in the holy book that describe Paradise as a land where two rivers cross. Geßner uses his digital camera to explore the potential of motion pictures in this location by taking 128 still photographs. He chose this technique to freeze the life of garden pipes and to depict movement as sequences of still images that can be reanimated in the minds of the spectator and himself. The potential of movement persists strongly in these images, suggesting that their current stasis is not their final act. Geßner’s practice is, in fact, never static; it’s always kinetic. The idea of animation is always present and at work: be a book, a movie, an installation, or an exhibition.
Hannes Rall and Emma Harper
Spatial Iterations: An animated Fulldome Adaptation of The Merchant of Venice
The Merchant of Venice is one of the most frequently performed of Shakespeare’s plays, with performances ranging from those set in the original, 16th century context, to adaptations which shift the action to contexts including California’s Venice Beach or 1930s Berlin. For centuries, critics, scholars, directors, and actors have paid particular attention to the way that the character of Shylock is portrayed in the play, and more broadly the way that his identity as a Jew is presented and interpreted. Despite the limited lines that he has, Shylock is “often considered Shakespeare’s most controversial character,” (McDonnell 2006) and debates have gone as far as to consider whether it is appropriate to perform the play at all in a post-Holocaust world as a result of the connotations of its portrayal of Jewish characters. Debates continue today between “those who insist that Shakespeare was exposing his Christians’ hypocrisy rather than attacking Judaism and those who claim that all Elizabethans were automatically anti-Semitic and would have found Shylock’s torments hilarious” (Dobson et al., 2015).
The authors engage with the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon to create an animated adaptation for a Fulldome environment that allows the viewer to experience Venice through the eyes of Shylock. Our approach suggests a sympathetic reading of Shylock as a character. We embrace the narrative complexities of Shakespeare’s work in a hybrid approach between fictional lines and factual accounts of historical environments. Omitting any visual depiction of Jewish characters we venture into a spatial interpretation of Venice that juxtaposes it with lines from the play that demonstrate the implicit criticism of contemporary Christian attitudes.
Our paper will allow deep insights into the complex process of balancing this highly sensitive topic in the creation process from writing, visual development and animation production.
Panel 6: Hybrid Space
Aline Helmcke
Intervention through Drawing: Experimental Drawn Animation and the Cinematic Space
Although it can convey the notion of space and depth, spatial configuration in drawn animation proves to be a sheer illusion. The film projection plane is a two-dimensional entity, and so is a sheet of paper. The paper plane as such is generally not actively perceived by the viewer. It serves as an “empty space”, an invisible basis for the drawing, whereas the line serves as the invisible representation mode for the figure. Thus, an illusion of space is being created. Particularly author’s films with an experimental approach to drawing, however, can prove this illusion to be a fragile construction: the drawing material, the process of drawing as well as the individual drawing mode of the filmmaker build up a vital network of elements that create a lively tension between them. They can become visually dominant and thus cause a shift of attention to what is being represented on the screen. This adds a dimension to the film that has a fundamental impact on its dramatic structure: when lines become independent and transform given dimensions, when a crumble of graphite disrupts the narrative and leads it in a different direction, the viewer has to question, reinterpret and rethink what he or she is looking at.
The presentation will take a closer look at these particular moments which initiate an oscillation between the medium of drawing and the notion of space created through drawn animation. It examines the relevance of drawing process, material and drawing mode in experimental drawn animation and investigates their impact on the films’ dramaturgy.
Anastasiia Gushchina
Animating Real Space: Material-Based Animated Documentary and Its Relationship to History
This paper explores the relationship between the historical space and the animated space in contemporary material-based animated documentaries.
In the last two decades, cinema scholars have noted a proliferation of documentary animation—a film genre that is often described as marrying two opposite ways of seeing the world (Ehrlich 13). Yet while scholars actively discuss representational aspects of animated documentaries (Honess Roe 17), tendencies in animated documentary production often stay overshadowed. Hence my research focuses on exactly that—on how animated documentaries are made and what they are made of.
I argue that material-based animated documentaries—the ones produced in stop-motion—complicate the relationship between the animated image and its profilmic event. By using physical props and media in its production, the body of animated documentaries I chose for this study (e.g. Crulic, Mend and Make Do, The Devil in the Room, Model Childhood) challenge the assumption that animation is inherently ephemeral and non-indexical. Moreover, being heavily reliant on photographic technology, these films tend to reclaim the documentary connection between photographic images and reality. While not suggesting that puppets, clay figurines, paper cutouts, or other materials hold an unmediated connection to history, they still preserve traces of animators’ labour and remind the viewers of the bodily presence of the artist and their subjects behind the screen, in the very real historical space. In other words, in portraying real-life events with real-life things, contemporary animated documentaries blur the distinction between the animated space and the space of history. Hence, this paper will attempt to find the meanings that arise due to the implementation of stop-motion animation in a documentary context.
Panel 7: Outer Space
Marco Bellano
Wishing stars. The multiple space aesthetics of the animated night sky
The night sky rendered by photorealistic digital animation has a key role in contemporary visual culture. It appeals to the aesthetics of the CGI sublime (Trifonova 2018, 75) and of the cosmological sublime (Goodwin 2018, 153-163), by overplaying the scale difference between the observer and the multitude of stars, whether they are a background with little screen time, like in the Titanic (1997) finale, or a primary narrative item, as in Don’t Look Up (2021) o in the animated films by Makoto Shinkai.
Such aesthetics seems an outcome of a spectacular trend in scientific astroimaging first instated in the 1980s by the astrophotographer David Malin, and then exalted by the Hubble Space Telescope pictures since the 1990s. However, most of the images by Malin and Hubble portrayed space landscapes well beyond the reach of any Earth observer. Objects like the Horsehead Nebula or the Pillars of Creation can only be revealed by photography. Elizabeth Kessler (2019, 37-38) has argued, though, that the post-processing of the Hubble photos consciously tries to make them look familiar, borrowing colour palettes and layouts from Romantic paintings about the American West; she called this astronomical sublime.
The proposed talk will discuss how the animated aesthetics of the night sky merged the cosmological and astronomical sublime into a third form which might be named galactic sublime, as its archetypal image would be an artistically enhanced Milky Way streaming across the sky. The discussion will also reference the visual turn in contemporary culture (Mitchell 2005, 346), the 1980s shift to entertainment in science outreach (Campbell 2016, 8) and the new paradigm for scientific images, which balances truth-to-nature with trained judgment (Daston and Galison 2007, 363-371).
Jana Rogoff
Animating the Space Travel during Cold War and beyond
The strong bond between the medium of animation and space exploration developed many decades before the launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957 (which marked the beginning of Space Age), but it was especially during the Cold War space race that animated narratives capitalized on this subject. After Yuri Gagarin’s trip to outer space in 1961, the countries of the Eastern bloc entered a new era of techno-enthusiasm, which manifested by an abundance of cinematic and photographic representations of astronautics. These, to a great extent, followed the official narratives of heroism and geopolitical triumph. In contrast, the countless animated films on space travel, especially those made between 1958 and 1984, formed an antidote to this mainstream discourse and challenged the Space Age myths. They explored the satirical and ironical potential of the subject, parodied the fetishization of technology and science, and dislodged established notions of progress. This paper considers various constructs of human relationship to outer space as they were conceived in the history of Eastern European animation. It traces the specific artistic practices that animators including Walerian Borowczyk, Dušan Vukotič, Elbert Tuganov, Jiří Trnka, József Nepp, and Aurel Klimt developed, building on the juxtaposition of low-tech animation techniques with the high-tech world of rocket science; on pairing scientific imagination with wild violations of physical laws (a property typical for animation); and on the tension between the limits of a 2-D cinematic space and the referenced 3-D realm, in this case literally one without limits. In addition, the paper investigates how, in different historical and cultural contexts, astronomical themes in animation were used as a vehicle for indirect or parabolic commentary on issues as diverse as national identity, memory, mythmaking, gender, and public culture.
Martina Fröschl
Computer-animated scientific visualizations as a door to experience dimensions
The main objective of the Science Visualization Lab at the Digital Arts department of the University of Applied Arts Vienna (in the following text abbreviated Sci Viz Lab) is to open up experiences to hidden worlds, to worlds which cannot be perceived by humans without the help of technical appliances and processes. Human knowledge is increasing in a breath-taking pace and scientific and artistic experts can only overlook a distinct field of expertise. Therefore, the projects of the Sci Viz Lab are highly interdisciplinary to be able to capture various perspectives of a topic and transfer the experiences of other dimensions using data and expert inputs into animated videos and experiences to convey topics of major importance to humanity. Even in two-dimensional videos produced by the Sci Viz Lab, most of the time, the third dimension is presented through stereoscopic versions of the animations which enable us to view the hint of a fourth dimension in the moving pictures.
The Sci Viz Lab is a hub which aims to bring together very different people and world-views. This way, examples of knowledge dimensions of the Sci Viz Lab are, for instance, the projects NOISE AQUARIUM1, CRISPR/Cas9-NHEJ: Action in the Nucleus2, Virus Dice3, or Butterfly}Pieris{Effect4. In computer animations presented in different media such as cave and dome environments, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality immersive experiences and art installations multi-variant attempts to inform viewers in multi-sensory approaches are undertaken. The experience of dimensions in various projects of the Sci Viz Lab offers the exploration of space in multidimensional environments with a focus on the presentation of scientific data sets and their distinct meanings for our human societies in innovative ways.