Substitutive bodies and constructed actors - UAL Research Online

267 Pages·2016·11.25 MB·English

Title Substitutive bodies and constructed actors: a practice-based investigation
of animation as performance
Type Thesis
URL http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/3437/
Date 2012
Citation Hosea, Birgitta (2012) Substitutive bodies and constructed actors: a
practice-based investigation of animation as performance. PhD thesis,
University of the Arts London.
Creators Hosea, Birgitta
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Substitutive bodies and constructed actors:
a practice-based investigation of animation as
performance
Birgitta Hosea

Thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements of the University of the Arts London
for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
February 2011
t Abstract
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Fundamental understandings of what animation actually is have been chang-
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ing in the face of material changes to production and distribution methods
brought about by the introduction of digital technology. Increasing artistic and
academic interest in the field has also contributed to this re-conceptualisation
and re-imagining of animation, such as the emergence of Animation Studies, a
relatively new branch of academic enquiry that is establishing itself as a disci-
pline.
This research (documentation of live events and thesis) examines animation in
the context of performance, rather than in terms of technology or material process.
Its scope is neither to cover all possible types of animation nor to put forward a new
‘catch-all’ definition of animation, but rather to examine the site of performance in
character animation and to propose animation as a form of performance. In elaborat-
ing this argument, each chapter is structured around the framing device of anima-
tion as a message that is encoded and produced, delivered and played back, then
received and decoded.
The PhD includes a portfolio of projects undertaken as part of the research pro-
cess on which the text critically reflects. Due to their site-specific approach, these live
events are documented through video and still images. The work represents an inter-
twining, interdisciplinary, post-animation praxis where theory and practice inform one
another and test relationships between animation and performance to problematise a
binary opposition between that which is live as opposed to that which is animated. It is
contextualised by a review of historical practice and interviews with key contemporary
practitioners whose work combines animation with an intermedial mixture of interac-
tion design, fine art, dance and theatre.
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This research would not have been possible without the encouragement and guid-
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c ance of my supervisory team - Vladimir Mirodan, Paul Sermon and Paul Wells to whom
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I am most grateful. I have also had support from other members of CSM research
staff - Susan Trangmar, Katy Deepwell, Andrew McGettigan and Janet McDonnell; my
fellow PhD students - Maryclare Foá, Jane Grisewood and Carali McCall, with whom
I collaborate in the artists’ group, formerly known as Drawn Together (now renamed
Performance Drawing Collective) and those others who attended the Here Tomor-
row practice-based seminar group; my colleagues on the MA Character Animation
course at Central Saint Martins - Steve Roberts, Kevin Rowe and Kimmo Moyyky and
my Dean, Jonathan Barratt; the University of the Arts London Interdisciplinary Perfor-
mance Committee; Oliver Gingrich of Musion Systems; Alistair Newton for composing
the soundtrack to White Lines; everyone at Adobe, who have supported my use of
their software through their Freelancer and Adobe Education Leader programmes;
Matt Wicks, who has advised me on ActionScriping in Flash and collaborated on At
Home with Mr and Mrs Smith; Angie Taylor; Forkbeard Fantasy for their inspirational
Summer School; Candace Reckinger, Mike Patterson, Kathy Smith, Tom Sito and Lisa
Mann, who facilitated my artist-in-residency at the University of Southern California;
everyone from USC and CSM who contributed animation clips to my Chatter instal-
lation; Margie Medlin, Howard Read, Liz Walker, Nicola Schauerman and Tim Pickup
who, despite being busy, all agreed to be interviewed about their practice; everyone
who agreed to participate in Lunch with Miss Smith; all those other kind souls too
numerous to mention who shared their enthusiasm for digital art, animation and per-
formance with me at conferences, screenings and in the darkened corners of public
houses and lastly, but not least, my nearest and dearest - Anne Pietsch, Sandra Loui-
son and my parents, Jim and Barbro Hosea, who all kept me going.
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s Table of contents
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Abstract .................................................................................................. i
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c Acknowledgments ................................................................................... ii

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1. Animation as performance: Research context

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l 1.1 Introduction ........................................................................................... 1
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1.2 Research questions, aims and objectives ................................................. 3
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1.3 Methods ................................................................................................ 5
1.4 The ontology of animation ..................................................................... 11
1.5 The ontology of performance ................................................................ 24
1.6 Conclusion: animation vs. performance .................................................. 33
2. Production: The animator as performer
2.1 Introduction .......................................................................................... 35
2.2 The performative animator: Dog Betty (Birgitta Hosea, 2007) .................. 36
2.3 Historical overview of performance techniques used in animation ............. 39
2.4 Animation Theatre: Soiled (Faulty Optic, 2003-7) ..................................... 61
2.5 The animator as author ......................................................................... 67
2.6 Performing animated presence: Out There in the Dark (Birgitta Hosea, 2008-
10) ............................................................................................................ 74
2.7 Presence and the animated performer ................................................... 80
2.8 Conclusion ........................................................................................... 87
3. Run-time: Animation playback
3.1 Introduction .......................................................................................... 91
3.2 Synchronous animation: At Home with Mr and Mrs Smith (Birgitta Hosea,
2009) ........................................................................................................ 92
3.3 Theories of liveness .............................................................................. 95
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s 3.4 Improvisation and the database: Little Howard (Howard Read) ................ 107
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e 3.5 Performing animation live: Quartet (Margie Medlin, 2007) ...................... 113
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3.6 Conclusion ......................................................................................... 126
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4. Reception: The performative viewer
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e 4.1 Introduction ........................................................................................ 129
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4.2 Choreographing the viewer: Becoming Starfish (Genetic Moo, 2006) ...... 130
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4.3 Theorising the performative viewer ...................................................... 145
4.4 The performative viewer in practice: Lunch with Miss Smith (Birgitta Hosea,
2010) ...................................................................................................... 145
4.5 Conclusion ......................................................................................... 157
5. Conclusion: Animation as performance ........................................... 159
6. Portfolio
6.1 Still Images ........................................................................................ 171
6.2 DVD Insert ......................................................................................... 203
7. References
7.1 Bibliography ....................................................................................... 204
7.2 Filmography ...................................................................................... 218
8. List of Works
8.1 Thesis Illustrations .............................................................................. 222
8.2 Portfolio Still Images ........................................................................... 229
8.3 DVD Contents .................................................................................... 232
Appendices
Appendix I. At Home with Mr and Mrs Smith
Appendix I A. Script ............................................................................. 234
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s Appendix I B Log of audience text chat participation...........................on DVD
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e Appendix II. Lunch with Miss Smith ............................................................. 245
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Appendix II.A Miss Smith Profile ............................................................ 245
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Appendix II.B Lunch with Miss Smith Script ............................................ 247

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Appendix II.C Participant information sheet for Lunch with Miss Smith ...... 252

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bl Appendix II.D Participant consent form for Lunch with Miss Smith ............ 254
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T Appendix II.E Participant interview transcripts.....................................on DVD
Appendix III. Case Study interview transcripts..........................................on DVD
Appendix IV. List of publications ................................................................. 256
III.A Academic journals (single-authored) ................................................ 256
III.B Academic journals (joint-authored) ................................................... 256
III.C Conference papers (unpublished) .................................................... 256
III.D Exhibitions .................................................................................... 257
III.E Residencies .................................................................................. 259
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t ”The über-marionette will not compete with life - rather it will go beyond it. Its ideal will
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not be the flesh and blood but rather the body in trance - it will aim to clothe itself with
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a death-like beauty while exhaling a living spirit.”1
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Edward Gordon Craig
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1 Edward Gordon Craig, “The Actor and the Über-marionette,” in The Twentieth Century Perfor-
mance Reader, ed. Michael Huxley and Noel Witts (London: Routledge, 2002), 161.
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t 1. Animation as performance: Research context
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n 1.1 Introduction
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h The room was cold and we sat on the floor, rather uncomfortably, in hushed
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r expectation. It began with a whirr as the projector was switched on. As an
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e unexposed loop of black film suspended from the ceiling by two 100 feet spools
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e continuously ran through the projector, all that could be seen on screen was a
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black void. A man began punching holes into the filmstrip as it passed through

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e his hands. I watched the dancing white circles of light that resulted from his ac-
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n tions gradually fill the screen, until the filmstrip became so weakened by punc-
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m ture marks that it broke. Transfixed by the moving circles in front of my eyes, it
r struck me, “but this is an animation that I am watching!” Afterwards, I reached on
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r the floor for the scattered black circles of celluloid that had been punched out
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p of the film. I put them in my pocket. That was all I could do to keep hold of the

s paradigm shift that I had just experienced in my thinking about animation, film
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and the live event. I had just witnessed Takahito Iimura’s recreation of his 1982
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performance, Circle and Square, at the Lux Centre in London around 2004. I did
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n My interest in the connections between animation and performance has resulted
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from the journeying that I have done between disciplines. In common with many other
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digital practitioners of my generation, I was trained in analogue media and then be-
came an immigrant to the digital environment. I studied Drama, Film and Television
Studies and then Theatre Design, including workshops at the Scottish Mask and Pup-
pet Centre. As a student, I acted in fringe productions, established a women’s theatre
co-operative, experimented with photography and VHS video and sang in a punk band
before moving on to a career in art direction and design for performance, working
in theatre, TV, film and pop promos. In the mid-90s I did a course in Computing and
Fine Art, which was run by a former member of the London Film Makers Co-op. This
inspired me to take up further study and a new career in digital media, motion graph-
ics and animation. With this experience of having worked across different disciplines,
1.1 Introduction 1
t as well as having been employed in both commercial, fine art and academic environ-
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ments, I have often felt like an interpreter who is able to speak the specific, technical
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language of more than one discipline and so is able to journey between different
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worlds. This research represents my desire to synthesise these different areas that I

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c have worked in, to explore theoretical concepts through interdisciplinary practice and
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a to identify an area of practice that spans ‘animation’ and ‘performance’.
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e This chapter will introduce the background to the research: the purpose and scope
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of the study, the methods of investigation that were employed and the context behind

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the research questions. It will also define the terms ‘animation’ and ‘performance’ as
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1.1 Introduction 2