Digital Aesthetics and Human Perception: Affect in Hand-drawn Animation and Computer-generated Imagery

The talk explores the differences between digital aesthetics created by computer animation and analogue aesthetics in hand-drawn animation. While computer-generated imagery (CGI) refers to the process that involves mathematical calculations within computers to create verisimilar naturalistic images, the traditional hand-drawn 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 algorithm-based CGI. To explore this assumption, the paper focuses on the questions 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.