Animating The Unconscious

As critical interest has grown in the unique ways in which art animation explores and depicts subjective experience - particularly in relation to desire, sexuality, social constructions of gender, confessional modes, fantasy, and the animated documentary - this volume offers detailed analysis of both the process and practice of key contemporary filmmakers, while also raising more general issues around the specificities of animation. Combining critical essays with interview material, visual mapping of the creative process, consideration of the neglected issue of how the use of sound differs from that of conventional live-action, and filmmakers' critiques of each others' work, this unique collection aims to both provoke and illuminate via an insightful multi-faceted approach.

​This book examines the role of memory in animation, as well as the ways in which the medium of animation can function as a technology of remembering and forgetting. By doing so, it establishes a platform for the cross-fertilization between the burgeoning fields of animation studies and memory studies. By analyzing a wide range of different animation types, from stop motion to computer animation, and from cell animated cartoons to painted animation, this book explores the ways in which animation can function as a representational medium. The five parts of the book discuss the interrelation of animation and memory through the lens of materiality, corporeality, animation techniques, the city, and animated documentaries. These discussions raise a number of questions: how do animation films bring forth personal and collective pasts? What is the role of found footage, objects, and sound in the material and affective dimensions of animation? How does animation serve political ends? The essays in this volume offer answers to these questions through a wide variety of case studies and contexts. The book will appeal to both a broad academic and a more general readership with an interest in animation studies, memory studies, cultural studies, comparative visual arts, and media studies. Chapter “Introduction” is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Contributions by Graham Barton, Raz Greenberg, Gyongyi Horvath, Birgitta Hosea, Tze-yue G. Hu, Yin Ker, M. Javad Khajavi, Richard J. Leskosky, Yuk Lan Ng, Giryung Park, Eileen Anastasia Reynolds, Akiko Sugawa-Shimada, Koji Yamamura, Masao Yokota, and Millie Young Getting in touch with a spiritual side is a craving many are unable to express or voice, but readers and viewers seek out this desired connection to something greater through animation, cinema, anime, and art. Animating the Spirited: Journeys and Transformations includes a range of explorations of the meanings of the spirited and spiritual in the diverse, dynamic, and polarized creative environment of the twenty-first century. While animation is at the heart of the book, such related subjects as fine art, comics, children's literature, folklore, religion, and philosophy enrich the discoveries. These interdisciplinary discussions range from theory to practice, within the framework of an ever-changing media landscape. Working on different continents and coming from varying cultural backgrounds, these diverse scholars, artists, curators, and educators demonstrate the insights of the spirited. Authors also size up new dimensions of mental health and related expressions of human living and interactions. While the book recognizes and acknowledges the particularities of the spirited across cultures, it also highlights its universality, demonstrating how it is being studied, researched, comprehended, expressed, and consumed in various parts of the world.

This volume brings together the advanced research results obtained by the European COST Action 2102 "Cross Modal Analysis of Verbal and Nonverbal Communication", primarily discussed at the PINK SSPnet-COST2102 International Conference on Analysis of Verbal and Nonverbal Communication and Enactment: The Processing Issues, held in Budapest, Hungary, in September 2010. The 40 papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the book. The volume is arranged into two scientific sections. The first section, Multimodal Signals: Analysis, Processing and Computational Issues, deals with conjectural and processing issues of defining models, algorithms, and heuristic strategies for data analysis, coordination of the data flow and optimal encoding of multi-channel verbal and nonverbal features. The second section, Verbal and Nonverbal Social Signals, presents original studies that provide theoretical and practical solutions to the modelling of timing synchronization between linguistic and paralinguistic expressions, actions, body movements, activities in human interaction and on their assistance for an effective human-machine interactions.

Based on the Tavistock Lectures of 1930, one of Jung's most accessible introductions to his work.

Animators work within a strictly defined, limited space that requires difficult artistic decisions. The blank frame presents a dilemma for all animators, and the decision of what to include and leave out raises important questions about artistry, authorship, and cultural influence. In Animating Space: From Mickey to WALL-E, renowned scholar J. P. Telotte explores how animation has confronted the blank template, and how responses to that confrontation have changed. Focusing on American animation, Telotte tracks the development of animation in line with changing cultural attitudes toward space and examines innovations that elevated the medium from a novelty to a fully realized art form. From Winsor McCay and the Fleischer brothers to the Walt Disney Company, Warner Bros., and Pixar Studios, Animating Space explores the contributions of those who invented animation, those who refined it, and those who, in the current digital age, are using it to redefine the very possibilities of cinema.

The Art of Czech Animation is the first comprehensive English language account of Czech animation from the 1920s to the present, covering both 2D animation forms and CGI, with a focus upon the stop-motion films of Jirí Trnka, Hermína Týrlová, Jan Švankmajer and Jirí Barta. Stop-motion is a highly embodied form of animation and The Art of Czech Animation develops a new materialist approach to studying these films. Instead of imposing top-down Film Theory onto its case studies, the book's analysis is built up from close readings of the films themselves, with particular attention given to their non-human objects. In a time of environmental crisis, the unique way Czech animated films use allegory to de-centre the human world and give a voice to non-human aspects of the natural world points us towards a means by which culture can increase ecological awareness in viewers. Such a refutation of a human-centred view of the world was contrary to communist orthodoxy and it remains so under late-stage consumer-capitalism. As such, these films do not only offer beautiful examples of allegory, but stand as models of political dissent. The Art of Czech Animation is a unique endeavour of film philosophy to provide a materialist appraisal of a heretofore neglected strand of Central-Eastern European cinema.

The first extended treatment of Hegel’s theory of the unconscious and his anticipation of Freud.