COML 4780 - Animation, Automata, Biomimesis

(crosslisted)
(also PMA 4780, VISST 4780)(HB) (LA-AS)

Fall. 4 credits.

E. Obodiac.

This seminar will explore cinematic animation and automata as forms of biomimesis. Motion is often considered the outward sign of life’s autonomy, yet spontaneous self-movement defines life as well as its opposite, the inanimate mechanism. Taking Jussi Parikka’s Insect Media as our guidebook, our seminar begins with a comparative analysis of Etienne-Jules Marey’s photographic motion studies, early wildlife cinematography, Ladislaw Starewicz’s world of insect animations, and the Mickey Mouse cartoon corpus, and discovers that cinematic animation is subtended by, on the one hand, 17th and 18th century developments in automata and sound/motion machines such as boîtes-musiques, and, on the other, by 20th century biomimetic robots such as Machina Speculatrix. If “automata gave birth to the movies,” what kind of “animation” do today’s biomedia engender?