Can you tell what it is yet? – An introduction to theories of realism

(Ivan’s Lecture on 10^th November 2011)

Realism means “Close resemblance to what is real; fidelity of representation, rendering the precise details of the real thing or scene.” (Oxford English Dictionary online)

There are two different views describing the concept of Realism, one is Nikolai Chernishevsky (1828-89), he said “The first purpose of art is to reproduce reality.” Whereas Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) said “‘Realism is a corruption of reality.” These are two completely different opinions reinforcing their concepts of Realism, and for me, I would say I would agree with Wallace Stevens because of the world we live in, the 3D/VFX/Games technology have advanced so fast, their work have become so realistic that nowadays we cannot recognise [unless we get told otherwise] which is real or not. Sometimes it feels like we live in the world of Matrix. So I would think that Steven’s theory would apply to the world we live in now. Even though Nikolai Chernishevsky, his theory would in a way apply to the 3D and VFX artists because we are thriving to create realism in our work. Both opinions are completely different but both reinforced the hypothesis of Realism.

Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin: their theories of Realism

Remediation is a dream of media is to erase itself

Immediacy means the medium vanishes, e.g. ‘getting lost’ in a book, suspending disbelief in a film (note: immediate means ‘without mediation’, i.e. real)

Hypermediacy is the medium draws attention to itself, e.g. judging book by cover, marvelling at special effects.

Ivan then started talking about computer games, compared to retro games in 1970s to now, in 1970s, they’re more basic and too simple and limited vector based, like for instance, Space Invaders, Asteroids, or Sonic the Hedgehog or old Sega games. And now, we have Call of Duty, Halo, Need For Speed, and so on, all becoming so realistic in visual aspect. You can see that the convention of Realism have changed, because back then, there were plenty of room to improve their quality of the games and films, they are more fun, and more recognisable on what’s real and what’s not. But now, the technology are unbelievable (well technically the 3d work are very believable but im not referring to that, I meant unbelievable as in amazing!) the tech went from 2D to 3D to 4D! there are already realistic holograms, like you used to see in Star Trek and Star Wars, but now it had become a reality. Before it was just dreams and designs but now all have come alive (virtual speaking)  

The main goal of Realism is to interact with the audience, to get them to be involved with their awe virtual world, and also they give the audience a chance to escape from the real reality to weird warp fake reality.

Telling Tales: ways of thinking about narrative from Aristotle to Aarseth

(Alison Gazzard Lecture on 3rd November)

Starting this blog post with Aristotle’s quote

           

“We’ve considered that a tragedy is an imitation of an action that is complete in itself because it’s a whole of some quantity (because a whole doesn't’t have to have a quantity). Now a whole in something that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. A beginning isn’t necessarily after something else but it is followed by something. An end naturally follows something – either as necessary or as consequential – and has nothing following it. And a middle follows something and is followed by something else. Therefore a well-constructed plot cannot begin or end at any point the author would like”

–      Book 7, Poetics

 

Nice words from Aristotle, one of the Greek legends! Now what he said, basically he said every story always have a beginning, a middle and an end.

Now some definitions!

narrative [na-ra-tiv], a telling of some true or fictitious event or connected sequence of events, recounted by a narrator to a narratee (although there may be more than one of each)… A narrative will consist of a set of events (the story) recounted in a process of narration (or discourse), in which the events are selected and arranged in a particular order (the plot). The category of narratives includes both the shortest accounts of events (e.g. the cat sat on the mat, or a brief news item) and the longest historical or biographical works, diaries, travelogues, etc., as well as novels, ballads, epics, short stories, and other fictional forms.

Chris Baldick, Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 145.

What a mighty long definition, Narrative in short definition is either a spoken or written account of connected events; a story of a bare narrative of the details. 

Narrative = story + plot

Story = what it is about?

Plot = how it is told?

Now one of the best parts!! I think this theory is really interesting and very seemingly correct as I’ve been reflecting on all those movies I have watched in my lifetime (those I can remember!)

The theory is called “Freytag’s triangle”

 

 

Gustav Freytag’s theory is a narrative structure that divided a story into five parts, which play the important parts in narrative story. These parts are: exposition (of the situation); rising action (through conflict); climax (or turning point); falling action and resolution.           

Now next one is about “Propp’s Character Types”, this made up of seven roles which, by the way, are always available in any narrative story out there.

The seven parts are

•The villain—struggles against the hero

•The donor—prepares the hero or gives the hero some magical object

•The (magical) helper—helps the hero in the quest

•The princess and her father—gives the task to the hero, identifies the false hero, marries the hero, often sought for during the narrative. Propp noted that functionally, the princess and the father can not be clearly distinguished

•The dispatcher—character who makes the lack known and sends the hero off.

•The hero or victim/seeker hero—reacts to the donor, weds the princess

•False hero—takes credit for the hero’s actions or tries to marry the princess.

I applied that theory to one of “The Simpsons” episodes in our lecture seminar, it was very challenging, because you cant tell which role but hard to apply to the characters in The Simpsons because some of the characters, i.e. Lisa Simpson, is she the Hero or False Hero, its hard because some of the characters does share two types or even three. It was fun! Mind-numbling it was.

Nothing new: intertextuality

(Thurs’ Lecture on 27th October 2011)

The word “intertextuality” is derived from the Latin “intertexto”, which means ‘to intermingle while weaving’. Intertextuality is a term, whom was first introduced by Bulgarian-French Semiotician Julia Kristeva in the late sixties.

This quote by Graham Allen, titled ‘Intertextuality’ in ‘The Literary Encyclopedia’, “The fundamental concept of intertextuality is that no text, much as it might like to appear so, is original and unique-in-itself; rather it is a tissue of inevitable, and to an extent unwitting, references to and quotations from other texts.” Its quite interesting, it means something that we created or wrote or drawn or any type of verb, aren’t ours to begin with, in fact it would be influenced or possibly mimic by something or someone in the past that we never knew or subconsciously knew, something that built up from the past to now. Its like information are being recycled, it’s the same but in different manners as it was carried through the time from the beginning to now. 

As the word ‘text’ suggests, originally related to literary culture (novels, poetry, etc.), but has since developed application to cultural artefacts in general - to films, fashion, product design, games, etc.

Two kinds of intertextuality:

•  unconscious - true intertextuality: beyond author’s control

•  (self-)conscious - what Kristeva calls ‘the banal sense of “the study of sources”’ (Kristeva Reader, p.111)

Which now bring us to authorship and originality of the Intertextuality,

(this part is copied from the powerpoint slide as I think its really good and well explained)

Traditionally, focus has been on the character of the author (the inspired creator) and the work (as unique production). Intertextuality:

•            shifts the emphasis from ‘author’ to ‘reader’

•            views the work as part of an infinite web of other works, not simply on its own terms

This includes:

•            remakes, sequels, prequels within same media

•            translations between media, e.g. novel to film, film to computer game (and vice versa)

•            transition between genres, e.g. Seven Samurai remade as Magnificent Seven

•            relation of artefacts within a genre group, e.g. between different episodes of the same TV soap opera, or between different TV soap operas

The following are crucial to understanding intertextuality:

•            nothing is truly original (in the sense of unique, pristine, one-off)

•            authors can’t control the ways in which their works are read and understood

•            authors can’t even fully control the content of their works: inevitably there will be meanings they didn’t intend.

So basically it means everything we do (intertextuality speaking) aren’t original, this topic kind of really make me think, it’s like everything I do or say were already spoken by someone else in the past. It’s weird to look in this point of view, if I was to define this “intertextuality”, I would say, “we are currently making a new footprint step, continuing the footprints that was made behind us”, I hope that would make sense. But the important thing is that I do understand what intertextuality means!

The next part is from Ivan in his notes.

Hypertext – It is possible that the rise of the digital has intensifed the processes of intertextual mixing, in particular the ‘hypertextual’ linking of media forms such as the internet:

‘Perhaps the most obvious and potentially far-reaching application of intertextual theory and practice in recent years, however, has come in the realm of information technology… A hypertext materially appears to demonstrate its lack of autonomy with regard to meaning. It dramatically opens itself out to the intertextual, disturbing that chronological, consumerised approach to reading that Kristeva and Barthes were so keen to challenge…’ (Graham Allen)

What a reality check that was! Why do I think that? because this quote above is reminding me how time does really travel through, changing so incredible fast at a increasing speed, the technology in our society are getting better and better, stronger even, but also it reminded me that now it slightly lost the true values of what we used to had in old time.

Now im ending this post with Ivan’s last quote to this lecture (kind of symbolic don’t you agree?) “Confounding the realist agenda that “art imitates life”, intertextuality suggests that art imitates art.” (Chandler)

Reading the signs: semiotics

(Previous Lecture on Thurs 20^th October)

Main topics for this lecture are

•  signs and signification: signifier and signified

•  iconic and arbitrary (or symbolic)

•  denotation, connotation, myth

•  paradigm and syntagm

Signification = the process of signs-being-made-noticed-and-understood

Sign = signifier (physical form) + signified (mental concept)

iconic: how close a sign is to ‘the real thing’, how constrained it is by the thing it represents, e.g. a photographic portrait is typically iconic, a doodled caricature less so

arbitrary (aka symbolic): how far away a sign is from ‘the real thing’, how unconstrained it is by the thing it represents, e.g. a person’s name bears little physical resemblance to them, but is less arbitrary than an employee number

denotation: what the sign is, at the most basic level of understanding – what it denotes literally

connotation: what it suggests, a more subtle culturally determined reading – what it connotes

myth: the ‘world-view’ it contains or implies – the ideological or political meaning of the thing – not ‘myth’ as in not true, fictitious, misleading (although it may be all three of these things)

paradigm: a set of signs available to be used in a context (e.g. the paradigm of ‘landscape’, or ‘clothing’, or of ‘food’)

syntagm: the particular selection of signs (from the paradigm(s) which are available (e.g. a coastal landscape, late afternoon, in the rain, from a low angle; red shoes, fish-net stockings, grey jumper, furry hat; cheese, pickle and a wedge of granary bread)

Playing with paradigm/syntagm can subvert signs and create semiotic impact by generating unexpected connotations and appealing to unexpected myth systems

A little introduction to Semiotics ...

Semiotics is the study of signs and the way itself create meaning, three points to emphasise the definition,

•            The study of signs themselves

•            The way the signs are organised into codes or systems (languages)

•            The culture where those languages are used

Semiotics can be defined with texts, could be either written or visual aid as long they portray their own definitions, their meanings.

A text is a collection of signs -- juxtaposition, sequence, relative emphasis and how much it is in agreement with convention and previous examples, creates a (second) set of signs out of the signs and can give the text an overall meaning that may not be apparent from its constituent parts.

There are just a few important notes about this lecture. Ivan have shown us examples (visual aids) to explain each definitions. Which was VISUAL and certainly was exercising our brains. J

A breakdown of communication: the process model and cybernetics

(Previous Lecture on Last Thursday 13th October 2011)

Once Ivan started this topic, I found it really hard to understand but once he explained it, I roughly had a good idea of what this topic is all about.

I’m going to start off this part with the notes I wrote (copied some definitions from the slides) during the lecture, just bear with me because I’m slightly struggling to understand my own notes! J

Definitions from the slides

Noise – anything added to a signal between transmission and reception. In other words, any disruption or distortion or ‘blanking’ of that signal, e.g. crackles on a phone line, snowstorm on a screen, excess of information, background chatter, physical discomfort, wandering thoughts…

Redundancy (redundant information) – predictable/ conventional information - not ‘useless’ – it’s very useful, because it establishes common ground and facilitates communication, e.g. a greeting such as a wave, a handshake or the word ‘Hello’ communicate nothing new, they are entirely predictable, but they open the way to further communication.

Entropy (entropic information) – unpredictable/ unconventional information - also useful because this is where the new information is conveyed, e.g. ‘I’ve just run over your dog.’ This information is unexpected and therefore entropic.

He explained the process model of communication, which were established by Shannon and Weaver during the World War Two, they both were mathematicians who wanted to expand the abilities of the communications and their work are used in our society. Which is pretty cool. Like Einstein with his inventions that we still use now, i.e Light.

Anyway back to the point, COMMUNICATIONS…

Basic Parts of the process model of communication, Transmitter and Receiver, and something that passes between both of them. Between them, it would be “information” passing through, but then again, defining “information” are overrated. So it could be anything passing between them. It could be a text message, it could be a phone call, a Morse code, it could be body language, facial expressions, sign language, it could be anything, as long it’s something we can give, to recognise and response. Once the Transmitter sent an “information” to receiver, then a receiver would “feedback” right back to the receiver, in order to show any understanding, (any type of a hint more like) that they got the message or not. Which now bring us to “noise”, a noise can disrupt something in between of Transmitter and Receiver that would affect the “information” to be sent and received. Now, “noise” can be either physical or personal, i.e. culture: I’m referring ‘physical” to something such as signal, wiring faulties, connection problems etc; and “personal” meaning human connections, anyone can interfere with “information” passing through, for instance, manipulating the information or divert the information which would result “communication breakdown”.

I've just thought of old example in ancient history, well not that ancient, but in old times, they used to have old telephone method, which were cans and strings, if the strings weren't straight, (meaning noise) would interfere with the spoken message that was passing through the can to the strings, resulting a failure of decoding from the receiver.

Other example to apply this to a real life situation, I’m a Deaf person, I can lip-read and speak (sometimes it can be difficult to speak especially if I’m really nervous) I’m also a strong BSL (British Sign Language) user. As a deaf person, if one would communicate with a hearing person, it would be difficult as both sides would face invisible barriers (could be referred as “noise”) if a hearing person struggles to understand my spoken language, and have no knowledge of BSL, we would have a communication breakdown. For example, if I say something to receiver, and the noise (invisible barriers) would stop the receiver from receiving my “information”. And wont be able to feedback to me.  I find it bit hard to explain this as I’m trying to put down my personal experience to explain this process of communication.

Caves, Shadows, Lanterns and the Fear of Trains: An Archaeology of Animation Technologies

“Animare”

It’s in Latin, which means, “to give life to”, from this, it sparked a question in our mind, how did the Animation started? According to Ivan, he mentioned this man named Lucretius, apparently he wrote the poem called “De Rerum Natura” in c.70 BC (which is really in c.65 BC) about this “device” that project the hand drawn moving images. I wanted to see if this is actually true, I know that anything teachers/lecturers say, must be true, but not all the time. So I searched for his poem, it’s mighty long! It was a very interesting poems, he talked about particles, universe, the water and the wind and so on. But I couldn’t find which device Lucretius precisely mentioned, but he did describe the principle of “persistence of vision” where the optical effect of continuous motion produced when a series of sequential images were displayed, with each image lasting only momentarily. Even though he interpreted that theory from his dreams. That’s quite a finding Lucretius made. 
 

But according to the film history, it was not Lucretius who supposedly started the idea of Animation. If we look at the Greek Philosopher, named Aristotle, he actually was the first person to observe and literally describe how he saw a light after-effect; a persistent image (that slowly faded away) after he gazed into the sun. In a way, that’s kind of relevant to Animation. So I would say he started it all.   

However yet again, if we go all the way back to Palæolithic Age (which means “old age of the stone” in Greek) in around 40,000 BC, their paintings portraying the perception of motion within the paintings of animals which had multiple sets of legs in superimposed positions. 

 

Referring back to Lucretius, I have just came across to the Greek astronomer and geographer named Ptolemy of Alexandria in 130 AD, he reinforced the theory of Lucretius, he actually discovered Lucretius theory and proved the Lucretius' principle of persistence of vision 200 YEARS later! Reminded me of Leonardo Da Vinci where he drew accurately blueprints of hydraulics, war machines and the flight and so on, then five centuries later, his inventions were made reality. Amazing!

Now looking at Egyptian Era in 1600BC, when Ivan mentioned about this, I felt I want to get on chariot riding past those columns. Pharaoh Ramses II built a temple of Isis and it got 110 columns. Amazingly, each column had a painted figure of the goddess Isis in a progressively change position. So when horsemen or charioteers were riding past, they would see motion of Goddess Isis.

There is a Greek version of the columns but without an adventure on chariot, and that is “The Parthenon Frieze” (5^th century BC, and it’s forming the major part of the Elgin Marbles) it is displayed in British Museum.  

I will pick out few things that ignite the perception of Animation; read below…it’s basic AND interesting stuffs from the history.

Magic Lantern:

The Magic Lantern or “Laterna Magica” is an early type of image projector developed in the late 16th century.

Camera Obsscura

The Camera Obscura (Latin; "camera" means "vaulted chamber/room" & "obscura" means "dark" therefore "darkened chamber/room") is an optical device that projects an image of its surroundings on a screen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDtQm-Qlmao&feature=related

Thaumatrope

A thaumatrope is a toy that was popular in Victorian times. A disk or card with a picture on each side is attached to two pieces of string. When the strings are twirled quickly between the fingers the two pictures appear to combine into a single image due to persistence of vision.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vypEOfWjzv8&feature=related

Zoetrope

A zoetrope is a device that produces an illusion of action from a rapid succession of static pictures. The term zoetrope is from the Greek words "ζωή – zoe", "life" and τρόπος – tropos, "turn". It may be taken to mean "wheel of life".

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3yarT_h2ws

3d Zoetrope

The Ghibli Museum hosts a zoetrope using 3D figures on a rotating disk. Rather than slits or mirrors, a strobing LED is used. The animation on this zoetrope is inspired by My Neighbour Totoro.

Pixar created a 3D zoetrope inspired by Ghibli's for its touring exhibition which first showed at the Museum of Modern Art, featuring characters from Toy Story. Two more 3D Zoetropes have been created by Pixar, both feature 360' viewing. One is installed at Disney's California Adventure, sister park to Disneyland and the other is installed at Hong Kong Disneyland.

The original Pixar Toy Story 3D Zoetrope still travels worldwide and has been shown in London England, Edinburgh Scotland, Melbourne Australia, Seoul Korea, Helsinki Finland, Monterrey Mexico, Taipei Tawain, Kaohsiung Taiwan, Singapore, and is currently at Oakland California.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gjTWIYsLLU&feature=related

Praxinoscope

The Praxinoscope was an animation device, the successor to the zoetrope. It was invented in France 1877 by Charles-Émile Reynaud. Like the zoetrope, it used a strip of pictures placed around the inner surface of a spinning cylinder.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOItdZOGnx8&feature=related

Introduction: "Rough Magic"

Media Histories and Culture [MHC]...

I checked the Brief and it is mentioned that one of our assignments, that we are to create a research blog. So I thought why not to start the blog in advance. I then went to its module teaching resources in the Studynet before the first lecture on Thursday 6th October 2011 to be prepared. And there was an attachment named "This Rough Magic", so I guess it’s giving us a better understanding of what MHC is all about.

This Rough Magic:

We always seek independence in our mind, in our decision-making and in everything we do. We like to think that we create our own decisions, our own fate without any sort of influence that modifies our independence thinking in a way. But that’s not true in my opinion, because I believe that everything we do is always inspired by something in our lives, both good and bad. Prospero in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, said 

“To the dread rattling thunder,

Have I given fire and rifted Jove's stout oak,

With his own bolt; the strong-based promontory,

Have I made shake and by the spurs pluck'd up,

The pine and cedar: graves at my command,

Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let 'em forth,

By my so potent art. But this rough magic,

I here abjure.”

C.W. Sharpe, Caliban. Miranda. Prospero. The Tempest. (1875.)

So ‘This Rough Magic’ is reinforcing the idea. Because the humans are born with an instinct, striving us to achieve something we want to accomplish.

The quote is basically means (in English) that Prospero have “this rough magic” ability to control nature, he can do anything he want to do with it because he fictionally can control the nature with his spells, fiddling the nature to his tunes. But Prospero at the end has chosen to reject his rough magic. 

In a way we, as the animation students, are like Prospero because all of us have a Medium (Medius), but instead of his magic staff, we have our own technology to give us many abilities to make things happens, and not to reject our abilities.

I have shown this blog to my father to double check if he understands what I’m trying to say. He then pointed out many interesting points. He felt that Prospero is the past and we’re the present. As we know this famous quote, the past made us who we are now. It had given me a clear sense of what Ivan is trying to tell us by using the example of Shakespeare’s works. With his work, Ivan is empowering Prospero’s words to inspire us to embrace our individual medium/tools. My father also used the example of Avatar movie (2009, directed by James Cameron) to enlighten the Prospero’s theory, the Avatar’s storyline reminded my dad of the Native Americans’ history where the “Americans” stole the land and the gold from the Native Americans. Avatar is similar to that historical event but modified to a sci-fi and much updated version. But in overall it is similar to the history of Native American. He made me think that The Making of Avatar could be strongly influenced by the Native Americans' past so from there, avatar movie is like the present version of that past event. This is an interesting point that my father made. And I agreed with my father. Hope that does make sense to you all.

So coming to the conclusion, may the words of Prospero in Shakespeare's past to light the inspiration in our present to empower and to enlighten those in the future.