TECHNOLOGY — current posts — Fantasy/Animation

Between Humans and Machine: The Iron Giant's Reflection of AI

Popular media has often portrayed technology as a looming threat to society and human livelihood. However, animation as a medium has provided a unique lens through which to explore the nuances of humanity's interaction with technological forces. Brad Bird's feature The Iron Giant (1999) stands as a poignant example of this exploration. By analyzing the use of hybrid animation techniques and storytelling in the film, I aim to unravel a metaphorical narrative that delves into humanity's relationship with technology, as well as its modern-day resonance with perceptions of artificial intelligence (AI) and assumptions on the threat of machine learning to humanity.

EDITORIALAlyssa LamellNovember 22, 2024TECHNOLOGY, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, HOLLYWOOD, CEL ANIMATION, DIGITALComment

The Role of Animation in Creating New Visions for the Future

In the libraries of history and literature, there’s a recurring theme: it’s not enough to have knowledge, you have to be able to navigate it, accessing and linking relevant pieces of information that often seem disparate. The goal of the Library of Alexandria in Ancient Egypt was to amass all the knowledge in the world in one place, and the world’s first known index system, called the pinakes, was developed to organise the expanding collection as it became more and more unwieldy.

EDITORIALElizabeth CoxOctober 25, 2024ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, KNOWLEDGE, TECHNOLOGY, DIGITALComment

The ‘Unmasking Scene’ in the Student Films of Shofela Coker

Nigerian-born artist and illustrator Shofela Coker’s student films Oni Ise Owo (2007) and Iwa (2009) narrate tales of redemption at the intersection of divine will and the exercise of human agency. Iwa is a remake of the earlier animation completed as a Motion Graphics final project when Coker was an art student at the Memphis College of Art. This post reads a critical scene in both films to explore artistic creative agency at the intersection of traditional African art production and the digital provenance of animation.

EDITORIALMichael OshindoroApril 26, 2024SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA, REPRESENTATION, BODY, TECHNOLOGYComment

Another Kind of Magic: Méliès, Mercury, and Machine Learning

The music video for Queen’s “Heaven for Everyone” from their then-final record Made in Heaven (1995) - and a song that originally appeared on Shove It (1991), an album by drummer Roger Taylor’s side project The Cross (and featuring Freddie Mercury as a guest vocalist) - includes somewhat surprisingly footage from Georges Méliès’ early ‘trick’ films A Trip to the Moon (1902) and The Impossible Voyage (1904).

EDITORIALChristopher HollidayMarch 8, 2024TECHNOLOGY, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, VOICE, STARDOM, CELEBRITY, DIGITALComment

Rotoscoping Female Subjectivity and Emotion Work in Undone

This blog post about Undone (Amazon Prime, 2019-2022) functions as a coping mechanism in light of Undone’s cancellation after two seasons, but also sets out to shed light on fragmented selves and multiverses, tropes that have been particularly prevalent in recent women-centric US TV.

EDITORIALSarah LahmJanuary 19, 2024TECHNOLOGY, ROTOSCOPING, GENDER, REPRESENTATION, BODYComment

Pros & Cons of Marketing with Animation: 2D vs. 3D

Animation marketing is a type of video marketing that uses various types of animated content to convey ideas and concepts to an audience while also increasing traffic and sales for businesses. When precisely tailored to your target demographic, animation brings the power of imagination and creativity to your marketing strategies and has grown to become an effective marketing tool.

EDITORIALVideo CaddyApril 14, 2023MARKETING, TECHNOLOGYComment

Review: Nea Ehrlich, Animating Truth: Documentary and Visual Culture in the 21st Century (2021)

In Animating Truth: Documentary and Visual Culture in the 21st Century, Nea Ehrlich discusses a growing body of works broadly called animated documentaries. For the purposes of this open-access monograph, Ehrlich employs Sheila Sofian’s definition of the form as “any animated film that deals with non-fiction material” (36), expands it beyond the cinematic space and considers the use of animation outside of the theatrical setting.

BOOK REVIEWAnastasiia GushchinaFebruary 3, 2023DOCUMENTARY, TRUTH, REPRESENTATION, TECHNOLOGY, CULTUREComment

The Marvel Cinematic Universe and the Superhero’s Ambivalent Relationship with Technology

The term ambivalence was coined by the psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler to describe two opposite ideas that coexist in uneasy union. While superheroes are often understood as narratives of assurance, comfort and security, it is ambivalence, or even anxiety, that provides the more useful concept when it comes to interrogating the dynamics at work in the cinematic superhero phenomena. This is particularly the case in its relationship with technology, both aesthetically and philosophically.

EDITORIALDavid G. HughesMay 10, 2019SUPERHERO, MARVEL, FANTASY, ANIMATION, TECHNOLOGYComment