Thursday, August 21, 2008

synthetic animation

a) distinguish synthetic animation from indexical animation. In indexical animation, there is a source, a data-stream, which the infographic animates as a representation. In synthetic animation the source is a series of gestures which are read as commands
b) a synthetic animation is a record of gesture-commands which erases its own history in the concluding command 'Flatten layers'

2 comments:

Mitchell said...

Isn't "a series of gestures which are read as commands," just another data source? Isn't the synthetic then also indexical? Flatten layers is equivalent to throwing away the source data for a visualisation.

Sean Cubitt said...

hey mitchell - shd have replied before but, y'know. I think the difference is between the finiteness of a dataset – by definition always numerable – and a gesture which, on the other hand, is a continuous fluid change. It's true that humans are, from the POV of machines, random number generators, but the difference I perceive is between the numerisation process which indeed turns the animaor into a data source, and the challenge of a gesture, which is of an order other than numerical (quite possibly infinitessimal – I wouldn't argue against the possibility of its mathematical expression – but if so then of a different order of math to the natural numbers of the dataset