Authors:
This book is open access, which means that you have free and unlimited access
Rethinks the historical and theoretical relationship between animation, mathematics, and engineering by studying software tools used to animate. unpredictable phenomena
Offers a glimpse into the economic and institutional machine that is constantly producing the cycle of media technology emergence, dominance, and residue
Develops a theoretical framework for understanding how knowledge is created through making media apparatuses and “artifices”
Part of the book series: Palgrave Animation (PAANI)
Buying options
Table of contents (7 chapters)
-
Front Matter
-
Back Matter
About this book
Uncanny computer-generated animations of splashing waves, billowing smoke clouds, and characters’ flowing hair have become a ubiquitous presence on screens of all types since the 1980s. This Open Access book charts the history of these digital moving images and the software tools that make them. Unpredictable Visual Effects uncovers an institutional and industrial history that saw media industries conducting more private R&D as Cold War federal funding began to wane in the late 1980s. In this context studios and media software companies took concepts used for studying and managing unpredictable systems like markets, weather, and fluids and turned them into tools for animation. Unpredictable Visual Effects theorizes how these animations are part of a paradigm of control evident across society, while at the same time exploring what they can teach us about the relationship between making and knowing.
Keywords
- Animation
- Visual Effects
- Live-Action Cinema
- Economics
- Mechanical Control
- Socio-Political
- Engineering
- Open Access
Reviews
Authors and Affiliations
-
Department of Film & Media, University of California, Berkeley, USA
Jordan Gowanlock
About the author
Jordan Gowanlock is a media historian. For the past two years he has been conducting research as a postdoctoral visiting scholar in the Department of Film and Media at UC Berkeley, USA. He is currently a non-regular faculty member at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, Canada.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Animating Unpredictable Effects
Book Subtitle: Nonlinearity in Hollywood’s R&D Complex
Authors: Jordan Gowanlock
Series Title: Palgrave Animation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74227-0
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2021
License: CC BY
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-74226-3Published: 29 May 2021
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-74229-4Published: 29 May 2021
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-74227-0Published: 28 May 2021
Series ISSN: 2523-8086
Series E-ISSN: 2523-8094
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XI, 206
Number of Illustrations: 4 illustrations in colour
Topics: Animation, Film and Television Industry, Film Theory