Expanded Animation 2023

Synaesthetic Syntax IV: The Ghost vs the Machine

In this, our fourth symposium at the critical juncture of embodied, sensual perception and the processes and technologies of expanded animation, we turn our attention to kinaesthetic and physical presence. Our human senses of proprioception (detecting our own position in space) and the vestibular system (detecting gravity, movement and balance) allow us to map our surroundings, navigate through space and detect the proximity of others. In an age in which our city streets have become a film studio with our every movement tracked by surveillance cameras and our every thought, memory or social interaction mediated through the camera, GPS, microphone and motion sensors of our smart devices, what does it mean to have a body? In what ways can expanded animation explore the physical presence of the live human body in motion and what is the role of technology in relation to this?

The conference will be held at the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria. The media festival will take place on the 6th–10h of September 2023: https://ars.electronica.art/festival/en/.

We are looking for thought-provoking proposals that present innovative perspectives on working in expanded animation with the live body in motion. The questions we are interested in include, but are not limited to:

• How can we critically and creatively use live performance in animation and animation in live performance?
• What can the liveness of performance bring to animation in terms of improvisation, participation, spontaneity and unpredictability?
• Since ancient times, thousands of years of performance practice have produced many different ways to move a body from stylised forms of dance to exaggerated clowning. What is ‘life-like’ motion and why does psychological realism remain a goal for animated characters who are, after all, not human?
• In what new ways can the properties of human kinaesthetics be applied to animation? How can balance, gravity, weight, movement patterns, spatial mapping and proximity detection be re-imagined and creatively explored?
• What are the ethics of capturing and re-appropriating a performer’s physical movement signature with mocap? How can we counter the algorithmic biases built into the fabric of motion capture systems and the under-representation of different demographics in motion capture libraries?
• How might the technologies of surveillance, motion detection and capture be subverted and used for new artistic purposes?
• How can the space in which performance takes place be animated and what impact does this have on performer and audience experience?
• Can animation be used in live performance to disrupt theatrical conventions such as the fourth wall and unity of time and space?
• How can animation be used to create proximity and communal experience in connected audiences?
• How can AI technology revolutionize/change the way we will animate human bodies?
• What does it mean to have a body in interactive animated environments (metaverse, games, VR)?

Submission deadline: Friday, 26th May 2023

We call for papers, presentations and responses to our themes above.

Submission is via Oxford Abstracts at this link: https://app.oxfordabstracts.com/stages/5966/submitter. You will be prompted to create a free account with Oxford Abstracts.

Your submission should include:

• Title of your presentation
• Abstract (brief summary of your proposed presentation) 500 words (including bibliographic references)
• Short Biography – 200 words
• Relevant links to moving image work/websites etc.

If the paper is practice-based, it should include reflection and contextualisation in addition to presenting the practice. We will not accept papers that propose to show the practice only.

Finally, we are unable to provide feedback on individual submissions.

Ghislaine Boddington is an artist, curator, director and presenter, based in the UK and specialising in the future human, body responsive technologies and immersive experiences. She is co-founder and Creative Director of body>data>space (fka shinkansen), a pioneering interactive creative design collective who have advocated for the living body to be at the heart of the digital debate since the early 1990s. With a background in dance and performing arts and a long-term focus on the blending of our virtual and physical bodies, she engages in highly topical digital issues for our living bodies, including telepresence, biometrics, identity and representation of the self/other, connected body enhancements, digital intimacy and collective embodiment of the future.

Ghislaine’s practice led outputs and presentations, under the heading “The Internet of Bodies”,  lead to public facing outputs. She co-presents bi-weekly as Studio Expert for BBC Digital Planet (fka Click), the BBC World Service flagship technology and society radio programme and podcast. She is invited worldwide as a keynote speaker, presenter, host and panelist and consults into the arts, education, creative industries and business sectors. Across the last thirty years she has curated on theme of the future of the physical for Dance Umbrella and ICA in the nineties, eight multi-partner EU Creative Media projects (1998–2015) and Nesta’s FutureFest (2015–18). She has commissioned and produced over fifty body technology artistic works and has directed mid-scale participatory immersion experiences for festivals and venues globally, including the Royal National Theatre, Glastonbury and FutureFest. She was an Artist Research Fellow at Middlesex University (1999–2019) and is currently Reader in Digital Immersion at Greenwich University. 

As an active advocate for diversity and inclusivity since the 1980s, she is a co-founder of Women Shift Digital (2012 to date), a Trustee for the Stemettes and Spokesperson for the Deutsche Bank “Women Entrepreneurs in Social Tech” Accelerator.  She was an Inventor of the Year Finalist in the Tech Inclusive Alliance Awards 2019.

In 2017, Ghislaine was awarded the IX Immersion Experience Visionary Pioneer Award by Society for Arts and Technology (SAT) for her long-term innovative work in digital arts, and in particular her “passionate and inspirational engagement towards embodied intelligence”.

The symposium is jointly organized by Dr. Juergen Hagler, Ars Electronica, University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria, Hagenberg and Professor Dr. Birgitta Hosea, Animation Research Centre, University for the Creative Arts, Farnham, UK.

Scientific committee: Professor Rose Bond, PNCA, USA; Andy Buchanan, independent scholar; Associate Professor Max Hattler, School of Creative Media, CityU, Hong Kong.