Aylish Wood | University of Kent (original) (raw)
Books by Aylish Wood
Software, Animation and the Moving Image brings a unique perspective to the study of computer-gen... more Software, Animation and the Moving Image brings a unique perspective to the study of computer-generated animation by placing interviews undertaken with animators alongside an analysis of the user interface of animation software. Locating software at the centre allows Wood to develop a novel framework for considering computer-generated images in visual effects, animations, games and data visualizations. The idea of software can be intimidating, but approaching computer-generated animation via software need not rely on prior knowledge about programming or any particular animation software. The methodology developed in this book takes the user interface of software to be meaningful because it is culturally legible. The primary case study of this project is the computer animation software, Autodesk Maya. Interviews with animators provide a tangible way into software, and throughout these are allied with Wood's analysis of the spatial organizations of the user interface. Informed by the digital contours of software protocols, this study brings greater definition to something that remains implicit in many discussions of CG animation: more-than-representational space that reveals an origin in digital rather than physical space.
Papers by Aylish Wood
Thanks to everyone who freely gave their time to talk to me. Listening to people speak about thei... more Thanks to everyone who freely gave their time to talk to me. Listening to people speak about their work has been endlessly fascinating.
The Animation Studies Reader, 2019
Experimental Animation, 2019
In this essay, I take abstraction, a familiar term from discussions of experimental animation, an... more In this essay, I take abstraction, a familiar term from discussions of experimental animation, and expand it via design theorist Johanna Drucker’s idea of performative digital materiality. In this way I explore digital images through their associations and connections with people, processes and cultural domains. First, I connect abstraction in animation to its usage in computer science, and then establish a link to performative digital materiality. Based on these connections, I draw comparisons between Where Shapes Come From (Semiconductor, 2016) and Category 4 Hurricane Matthew on October 2, 2016 (2017), a visualisation of Hurricane Matthew created by the Godard Science Visualization Studio. Both Where Shapes Come From and Category 4 Hurricane Matthew use data to drive the motion of their CG elements. Consequently, while concerned with events in physical environments, they rely on algorithms to facilitate motion and so have a digital materiality too. Though sharing a similar techni...
Electronic Workshops in Computing, 2012
Pervasive animation in games, animation, films, numerous websites and stand-alone information int... more Pervasive animation in games, animation, films, numerous websites and stand-alone information interfaces, means that software increasingly influences how we imagine fictions, display information and interact with a digitally mediated world. Given its centrality in creating image, how can a 3D software package be made visible beyond the images seen in cinema, in games, commercials and visualizations? Is there such as thing as an interface language? This paper explores Autodesk ® Maya ® through a methodology based in visual studies, production culture studies, and science technology studies. The primary materials are moving images (games, films, animations, web sites), production culture materials, training manual and on-line tutorials, and interviews with software users. This diverse and extensive range of materials is approached through a focus on space. As the project remains a work-in-progress, a tentative conclusion is reached. The language of an interface is not something that can be straightforwardly read off the images of games, or fx sequence in movies, or animations. It emerges through software processes that make data legible and open to manipulability. It can be indirectly encountered as both a colonization of data by software users, and as a colonization of human users by data.
Choice Reviews Online, 2015
ABSTRACT Software, Animation and the Moving Image brings a unique perspective to the study of com... more ABSTRACT Software, Animation and the Moving Image brings a unique perspective to the study of computer-generated animation by placing interviews undertaken with animators alongside an analysis of the user interface of animation software. Locating software at the centre allows Wood to develop a novel framework for considering computer-generated images in visual effects, animations, games and data visualizations. The idea of software can be intimidating, but approaching computer-generated animation via software need not rely on prior knowledge about programming or any particular animation software. The methodology developed in this book takes the user interface of software to be meaningful because it is culturally legible. The primary case study of this project is the computer animation software, Autodesk Maya. Interviews with animators provide a tangible way into software, and throughout these are allied with Wood's analysis of the spatial organizations of the user interface. Informed by the digital contours of software protocols, this study brings greater definition to something that remains implicit in many discussions of CG animation: more-than-representational space that reveals an origin in digital rather than physical space.
Software, Animation and the Moving Image, 2015
Introducing an innovative approach to digital images, Wood explores what software tells us about ... more Introducing an innovative approach to digital images, Wood explores what software tells us about moving images. Her discussion starts with the logic of realism informing representational spaces in many moving images found in live-action films, games, animations and data visualizations. These are contrasted with sequences found in Iron Man 3, Oblivion, Rango and Journey that map onto a reality drawing its contours from ‘digital space’. Describing digital contours, Wood builds on her discussion of software based on interviews and analysis of Autodesk Maya. Digital contours are explained as movements and proximities in a digitally configured space. Based on non-representational theories used by cultural geographers, Software and the Moving Image puts forward more-than-representational space to explain the experience of digital contours in moving images.
Software, Animation and the Moving Image, 2015
Drawing on software studies, Wood offers an original methodology for approaching software by anal... more Drawing on software studies, Wood offers an original methodology for approaching software by analysing the user interface of the 3-D animation software Autodesk Maya in the context of its paratexts. This entails scrutinizing the operational logic of the software as it appears on the user interface, the frames and patterns associated with the surface and also the deeper structures of the software. In Getting to Know Software, Wood also looks back into Maya’s history and gives an account of the context of Autodesk Maya’s production and release, and a media archaeology of movement algorithms more generally. The discussion draws on interviews with users of software. This material provides many insights into what animators do as they create moving images using software.
Science Fiction Film and Television, 2014
Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to crimina... more Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 2013
Intangible spaces exist as a particular gathering together of influences, including those of peop... more Intangible spaces exist as a particular gathering together of influences, including those of people, things, locations and technologies. They are fascinating for thinking about how technologies influence cinematic space. This discussion of digital three-dimensional (3D) technologies in Hugo and the image maximum (IMAX) format in The Dark Knight uses paratexts to elaborate on this idea. Paratexts released in conjunction with Hugo are used to introduce an understanding of digital 3D cinematic space as something that is built as opposed to recorded. Those of The Dark Knight show film-makers encountering unexpected spaces arising from their use of IMAX technologies. By paying attention to the parameters of intangible space in The Dark Knight, the IMAX format is configured not as seamlessly immersive but as a location that offers multiple points of engagement for an audience. Both these examples demonstrate how thinking in terms of relationality, mediation and entanglement describes a ci...
Software, Animation and the Moving Image brings a unique perspective to the study of computer-gen... more Software, Animation and the Moving Image brings a unique perspective to the study of computer-generated animation by placing interviews undertaken with animators alongside an analysis of the user interface of animation software. Locating software at the centre allows Wood to develop a novel framework for considering computer-generated images in visual effects, animations, games and data visualizations. The idea of software can be intimidating, but approaching computer-generated animation via software need not rely on prior knowledge about programming or any particular animation software. The methodology developed in this book takes the user interface of software to be meaningful because it is culturally legible. The primary case study of this project is the computer animation software, Autodesk Maya. Interviews with animators provide a tangible way into software, and throughout these are allied with Wood's analysis of the spatial organizations of the user interface. Informed by the digital contours of software protocols, this study brings greater definition to something that remains implicit in many discussions of CG animation: more-than-representational space that reveals an origin in digital rather than physical space.
Thanks to everyone who freely gave their time to talk to me. Listening to people speak about thei... more Thanks to everyone who freely gave their time to talk to me. Listening to people speak about their work has been endlessly fascinating.
The Animation Studies Reader, 2019
Experimental Animation, 2019
In this essay, I take abstraction, a familiar term from discussions of experimental animation, an... more In this essay, I take abstraction, a familiar term from discussions of experimental animation, and expand it via design theorist Johanna Drucker’s idea of performative digital materiality. In this way I explore digital images through their associations and connections with people, processes and cultural domains. First, I connect abstraction in animation to its usage in computer science, and then establish a link to performative digital materiality. Based on these connections, I draw comparisons between Where Shapes Come From (Semiconductor, 2016) and Category 4 Hurricane Matthew on October 2, 2016 (2017), a visualisation of Hurricane Matthew created by the Godard Science Visualization Studio. Both Where Shapes Come From and Category 4 Hurricane Matthew use data to drive the motion of their CG elements. Consequently, while concerned with events in physical environments, they rely on algorithms to facilitate motion and so have a digital materiality too. Though sharing a similar techni...
Electronic Workshops in Computing, 2012
Pervasive animation in games, animation, films, numerous websites and stand-alone information int... more Pervasive animation in games, animation, films, numerous websites and stand-alone information interfaces, means that software increasingly influences how we imagine fictions, display information and interact with a digitally mediated world. Given its centrality in creating image, how can a 3D software package be made visible beyond the images seen in cinema, in games, commercials and visualizations? Is there such as thing as an interface language? This paper explores Autodesk ® Maya ® through a methodology based in visual studies, production culture studies, and science technology studies. The primary materials are moving images (games, films, animations, web sites), production culture materials, training manual and on-line tutorials, and interviews with software users. This diverse and extensive range of materials is approached through a focus on space. As the project remains a work-in-progress, a tentative conclusion is reached. The language of an interface is not something that can be straightforwardly read off the images of games, or fx sequence in movies, or animations. It emerges through software processes that make data legible and open to manipulability. It can be indirectly encountered as both a colonization of data by software users, and as a colonization of human users by data.
Choice Reviews Online, 2015
ABSTRACT Software, Animation and the Moving Image brings a unique perspective to the study of com... more ABSTRACT Software, Animation and the Moving Image brings a unique perspective to the study of computer-generated animation by placing interviews undertaken with animators alongside an analysis of the user interface of animation software. Locating software at the centre allows Wood to develop a novel framework for considering computer-generated images in visual effects, animations, games and data visualizations. The idea of software can be intimidating, but approaching computer-generated animation via software need not rely on prior knowledge about programming or any particular animation software. The methodology developed in this book takes the user interface of software to be meaningful because it is culturally legible. The primary case study of this project is the computer animation software, Autodesk Maya. Interviews with animators provide a tangible way into software, and throughout these are allied with Wood's analysis of the spatial organizations of the user interface. Informed by the digital contours of software protocols, this study brings greater definition to something that remains implicit in many discussions of CG animation: more-than-representational space that reveals an origin in digital rather than physical space.
Software, Animation and the Moving Image, 2015
Introducing an innovative approach to digital images, Wood explores what software tells us about ... more Introducing an innovative approach to digital images, Wood explores what software tells us about moving images. Her discussion starts with the logic of realism informing representational spaces in many moving images found in live-action films, games, animations and data visualizations. These are contrasted with sequences found in Iron Man 3, Oblivion, Rango and Journey that map onto a reality drawing its contours from ‘digital space’. Describing digital contours, Wood builds on her discussion of software based on interviews and analysis of Autodesk Maya. Digital contours are explained as movements and proximities in a digitally configured space. Based on non-representational theories used by cultural geographers, Software and the Moving Image puts forward more-than-representational space to explain the experience of digital contours in moving images.
Software, Animation and the Moving Image, 2015
Drawing on software studies, Wood offers an original methodology for approaching software by anal... more Drawing on software studies, Wood offers an original methodology for approaching software by analysing the user interface of the 3-D animation software Autodesk Maya in the context of its paratexts. This entails scrutinizing the operational logic of the software as it appears on the user interface, the frames and patterns associated with the surface and also the deeper structures of the software. In Getting to Know Software, Wood also looks back into Maya’s history and gives an account of the context of Autodesk Maya’s production and release, and a media archaeology of movement algorithms more generally. The discussion draws on interviews with users of software. This material provides many insights into what animators do as they create moving images using software.
Science Fiction Film and Television, 2014
Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to crimina... more Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 2013
Intangible spaces exist as a particular gathering together of influences, including those of peop... more Intangible spaces exist as a particular gathering together of influences, including those of people, things, locations and technologies. They are fascinating for thinking about how technologies influence cinematic space. This discussion of digital three-dimensional (3D) technologies in Hugo and the image maximum (IMAX) format in The Dark Knight uses paratexts to elaborate on this idea. Paratexts released in conjunction with Hugo are used to introduce an understanding of digital 3D cinematic space as something that is built as opposed to recorded. Those of The Dark Knight show film-makers encountering unexpected spaces arising from their use of IMAX technologies. By paying attention to the parameters of intangible space in The Dark Knight, the IMAX format is configured not as seamlessly immersive but as a location that offers multiple points of engagement for an audience. Both these examples demonstrate how thinking in terms of relationality, mediation and entanglement describes a ci...
... Technoscience in contemporary film US) Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King, grinds up Christma... more ... Technoscience in contemporary film US) Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King, grinds up Christmas-tree baubles and mixes the powder into various solutions in a ... in the social world see: B. Ruby Rich, 'The Party Line: Gender and Tech-nology in the Home,' in Jennifer Terry and ...
The chapter looks at the sound-image relations in Watchmen and Inception, focusing how VFX sequen... more The chapter looks at the sound-image relations in Watchmen and Inception, focusing how VFX sequences and audio work together in both films.