Moving Image and Human Perception: Affect in Hand-drawing Animation and Computer-Generated Imagery

Focusing on a Japanese animation cinema which has been widely acclaimed as an art form, in ‘Moving Image and Human Perception: Affect in Hand-Drawing Animation and Computer-Generated Imagery,’ Tomoko Tamari discusses the human perception of animation by scrutinizing ‘the affective effect’ in the dynamic relations moving images and human conscious-nonconsciousness. The paper explores the differences between digital aesthetics created by computer animation and analogue aesthetics in hand-drawing animation. While computer generated imagery (CGI) refers to the process that involves mathematical calculations within computers to create verisimilar naturalistic images, the traditional hand-drawing animation method involves symbolic expressive forms created by the animator’s spatiotemporal sensitivities. Drawing on Hayles’s discussion of the ‘cognitive nonconscious’, Simondon’s notion of ‘technical mentality’ and biosemiotics, the paper argues that there might be an inevitable incompatibility in the image formation process between human perception and algorithmic based CGI. To explore this assumption, the paper focuses on the question of ‘selectivity’ and ‘abstraction’ in both the neuronal and the technical, and emphasizes the significance of 'noise' (incompleteness and ambiguity) and ‘time’ (speed, duration, and delay) for human perception by exploring the nature of cognitive systems. The paper further considers the expansion of digital computer technology and its integration within human life by analyzing the ‘recursive dynamism’ of human perception and CGI. Tamari argues that embodied digital experiences could recursively become part of our environment and influence conscious-nonconscious cognition; in effect, become a significant part of the constitution of human perception in our digital computational society.