Animating Truth

Front matter

NEA EHRLICH

Edinburgh Studies in Film and Intermediality Series editors: Martine Beugnet and Kriss Ravetto Founding editor: John Orr

A series of scholarly research intended to challenge and expand on the various approaches to film studies, bringing together film theory and film aesthetics with the emerging intermedial aspects of the field. The volumes combine critical theoretical interventions with a consideration of specific contexts, aesthetic qualities, and a strong sense of the medium’s ability to appropriate current technological developments in its practice and form as well as in its distribution.

Part I Starting Points: The Evidentiary Status of Animation as Documentary Imagery

1. 2. Defining Animation and Animated Documents in Contemporary

Why Now?

Mixed Realities

Part II Animation and Technoculture: The Virtualisation of Culture and Virtual Documentaries

3; 4. Documenting Game Realities 5. 6

. Interactive Animated Documentaries: Documentary Games and

Screens, Virtuality and Materiality In-game Documentaries of Non-game Realities

VR

Part III The Power of Animation: Disputing the Aesthetics of ‘the Real’

Encounters, Ethics and Empathy Conflicting Realisms: Animated Documentaries and Post-truth

Epilogue Filmography Bibliography

Index viii

87 111 135

177 199

223 244 247 264

T/ustrations

FIGURES

I.1 Screenshot from Ki// Bill, directed by Quentin Tarantino, 2003

I.2 Waltz with Bashir, animated by David Polonsky and directed by Ari Folman, 2008

I.3 Tower, directed by Keith Maitland, 2016

1.1 Screenshot of Donald Trump and Xi Jinping sunbathing, TomoNews, 2017

1.2 Screenshot from One Iranian Lawyer's Fight to Save Juveniles from Execution, The Guardian and Sherbet, 2012

2.1 Slaves, directed by David Aronowitsch and Hanna Heilborn, 2008

2.2 Flight Patterns, a time-lapse animation artwork by Aaron Koblin, 2011

2.3 Powering the Cell— Mitochondria, Bio Visions Program and XVIVO Scientific Animation, 2012

3.1 Do It Yourself, directed by Eric Ledune, 2007

3.2 Second Bodies, directed by Sandra Danilovic, 2009

3.3 Serious Games: Immersion, artwork by Harun Farocki, 2009 Copyright Harun Farocki GbR, Berlin.

3.4 Reenactment of Valie Export and Peter Weibel’s Tapp und Tastkino, Eva and Franco Mattes, 2007. Online performance, Galleria Civica di Trento.

4.1 Molotov Alva and His Search for the Creator, directed by Douglas Gayeton, 2007

5.1 Avatar in three modes of animation, from Stranger Comes to Town, directed by Jacqueline Goss, 2007

5.2 World of Warcraft avatars incorporated into the US Visit rotoscoped video, from Stranger Comes to Town, directed by Jacqueline Goss, 2007

6.1 Continuum of vividness

6.2 Mob gathering outside the photography studio, from September

142 152

Illustrations

1955, an installation by Cagri Hakan Zaman, Deniz Tortum, Nil Tuzcu, 2016

6.3 Screenshot from documentary game 9/11 Survivor, by John Brennan, Mike Caloud and Jeff Cole, 2003

7.1 Screenshot from Darfur is Dying, Take Action Games, 2006

7.2 Music & Clowns, by Alex Widdowson, 2018

7.3 Slaves, directed by David Aronowitsch and Hanna Heilborn, 2008

8.1 Snack and Drink, directed by Bob Sabiston, 1999

8.2 The Simpson Verdict, video installation by Kota Ezawa, 2002

E.1 Another Planet, an animated documentary by Amir Yatziv, 2017

E.2 Screenshot from Black Mirror, ‘Fifteen Million Merits’ episode, created by Charlie Brooker, 2011

E.3 Trump Dreams, animated by Ruth Lingford, 2017

TABLE

E.1 Comparison of animation in the past with animation today vii

162 187 191

192 208 217 226

236 240

Acknowledgements

It would not have been possible to write this book without the generous help and support of many individuals. I would like to emphasise my deep gratitude to Kriss Ravetto and Angela Dimitrakaki for their unparalleled guidance and lasting influence on my thinking. My warm thanks also to Richard Williams, Suzanne Buchan, Paul Wells, Paul Ward, Gabriel Motzkin and Shai Lavi for their academic and intellectual support along the way.

Pd like to thank the team at Edinburgh University Press, and especially Gillian Leslie and Richard Strachan. The University of Edinburgh was instrumental in providing the resources and support necessary to complete this project and the Animated Realities conference I co-organised, thereby bringing together practitioners and researchers of animated documentary and allowing me to learn from the people in this emerging field. Important in my academic path was also the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, for providing me the opportunity to develop the ideas in this book. I’m also grateful to my colleagues and students at the Department of the Arts at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and would like to specifically thank Ruth Yurovski for her help on this project.

Pd also like to acknowledge the members of the Society for Animation Studies for proving to me I was in the right field and that I had found ‘my people’, and for being a source of friendship, discussions, good advice and collaboration. Thank you also to all the animators who shared their practical knowledge, work and perspectives on the field; the animation community’s endless creativity and enthusiasm for their research have been contagious and motivational. The many scholars whose work is quoted and referenced in these pages have inspired my thinking.

Many thanks to all the artists and individuals who generously gave me permission to use their work in my book: Amir Yatziv, Ari Folman and Yael Nahlieli, Keith Maitland, Jonathan Bairstow and Ben Sayer, Michael Astrachan, David Aronowitsch and Hanna Heilborn, Alain Viel, Aaron Koblin, Eric Ledune, Eva and Franco Mattes, Sandra Danilovic, Douglas Gayeton, Jacqueline Goss, Cagri Hakan Zaman, Deniz Tortum, Nil Tuzcu, Susana Ruiz, Alex Widdowson, Bob Sabiston, Kota Ezawa, Ruth Lingford and Antje Ehmann of the Harun Farocki GbR.

Acknowledgements ix

I owe a debt of gratitude to my friends, for their endless support. Thank you, Lauren Pyott, for being the first to listen. Thank you Ayelet Carmi, Claire Benn and Benjamin Dahlbeck, for everything. Thank you, Sivan Balslev, Zohar Gotesman, Oded Frell, Yaara Ilan, Ruthi Aladjem, Carmel Vaisman, Alexandra Antoniadou, Lara Aranson and Nicholas Miller for your intellectual feedback, incisive critique and stimulating conversations. Thank you also Cristina Formenti and Jonathan Murray for wonderful collaborations. Thank you, Lesley Marks, for meticulous editing but also for ongoing good advice.

Finally, I would like to thank my parents and partner, unwavering sources of support. Elana and Avishai, your different approaches, endless thoughtfulness and wisdom made this possible. And beyond everything else, Sebastian, for encouraging me in the first place and enduring everything it entailed, and for making me realise that some things are beyond words.

Introduction

This book was born out of the powerful experience of watching Quentin Tarantino’s film K7// Bill (2003).! This is how I remember it: ‘W-h-i-m-p-e-r ... the animated letters escape the child’s mouth. Hiding under the bed as her parents are attacked, a single tear forms as she watches the mattress above her slowly become soaked with blood, which then drips down onto her face, replacing the tears on her cheeks. In this sequence, a child witnesses the cruel murder of both her parents. There is so much blood; like steam rising, the red haze covers the screen, engulfing the scene in a way that no live-action footage could have done. Later, the girl takes her triumphant revenge through deadly sexual intercourse with the paedophile who slaughtered her mother and father.

The bold graphics with the slow-motion choreography present a surreal dance, aesthetically beautiful and yet, simultaneously and perhaps consequently, horrible. Not being familiar with Japanese anime and manga at the time, I felt the shock of the juxtaposition; it made me see animation as I had never seen it before. At the time, for me, animation had been all about fantasy, humour and memories of TV cartoons on Saturday mornings. This one scene showed me that now the potential capabilities of animation were limitless. I realised that the shocking use of animation in this particular case

Figure I.1 Screenshot from Ki// Bill, directed by Quentin Tarantino, 2003.

reflected a much broader and deeper change in the uses of animation today. This is what this book is about.

Even though animation has a complex, varied history, Disney’s pivotal role in creating animated content meant that it was culturally understood as removed from ‘the real’? It was frequently associated with childhood entertainment, fantastical content, and simplified or safeguarded educational matter with which to treat ‘difficult’ subjects like sexual education in the 1940s, as seen in Eddie Alberts Human Growth (1947), Disney’s Family Planning (1968),* and Les Clark’s VD Aitack Plan! (1973)° Or the visual signification of psychological states like the nightmare sequence in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958),° in which the spiral-themed animated sequences symbolise the protagonist’s despair, repeatedly circling back to the same moment. The animated K7// Bill scene, however, does not symbolise a fantastical dream; it is intended to jolt viewers, making the violence so graphic that it seems almost more than real. Using animation to portray ‘the real’ reflects a cultural shift whereby animation departs from childhood- or fantasy-oriented imagery, to engage increasingly with factual content. This trend is most obvious in the field of animated documentaries, which has grown rapidly since 2008 when the Oscar-nominated Waltz with Bashir’ gained wide critical acclaim.® Before 2009, contemporary examples of animated documentaries were scarce, and limited to works like Ryan (2004),’ Persepolis (2007),'° Chicago 10 (2007),''! and Waltz with Bashir. In 2008, animated documentary still sounded like something of an oxymoron.” However, since 2009, the medium has proliferated widely and as this book was going to press, a keyword search for ‘animated documentary’ videos on Google rendered 29.5 million results and included wide-ranging topics and media.

Animating Truth seeks to understand the reasons for this proliferation of animated documentaries. I propose that the shift in the imagery used to depict factual content is an essential aspect of what we now call the era of post-truth. Confronting such shifts in the status and aesthetics of ‘the real’, this book examines the rise of animated documentary in the twenty-first century, and addresses how non-photorealistic animation — that is, animation that does not attempt to look real or to resemble photographic imagery — is increasingly used both to depict and shape reality. In order to demonstrate this change, I map out the two parallel trends in animation: the expanded use of animation within documentary or non-fiction contexts, and the increasingly pervasive use of non-photorealistic animation within digital media. Animating Truth analyses the ways in which contemporary technoculture has transformed the relation of animation to documentary. (Technoculture indicates the co-dependence between society, culture and technology while emphasising issues of representation.)

I refer to documentary by recognising that today the boundaries between documentary and different fields of non-fiction such as journalism, forensics, education and information, are blurred.!? Moreover, animated documentary is not a contemporary invention, and the categorisation of individual films as animated documentary depends on different, often competing, critical definitions and classificatory criteria.'* Writing in 2005, Sheila Sofian defined animated documentaries as ‘any animated film that deals with non-fiction material’.!° This definition raises the murky issue of ‘non-fiction’, and points back to the blurred boundaries mentioned above.

As technology shapes culture, contemporary virtual realities — ubiquitous screens and the centrality of online platforms — require new visualisation methods. Once virtual screen worlds become interactive, the on-screen world becomes an /#-screen world, in which the viewer/user plays an active role. Animation has become central as a virtual aesthetic because it uses dynamic moving imagery that can respond in real time to user input. Since our contemporary mixed reality includes the virtual as well as the physical, new theorisations of documentary that transcend the capacity of photography are required; for photography both resembles and relies on material reality.!°

This book defines three key areas relating animation to documentary: the evidentiary status of animation as documentary imagery, the relationship between animation and the prevailing technoculture, and the aesthetics of ‘the real’. My aim is to understand how this visual paradigm shift influences viewers both ethically and politically, and what epistemological ramifications this transformation in non-fiction aesthetics may evoke.

Waltz with Bashir — about Israeli soldiers’ recollections of war — was an important trigger for this study because it is a contemporary example of animated documentary that stimulated much academic research." It is also a good starting point to interrogate animation’s evidentiary value, the kind of realities it portrays, and its conventions of documentary aesthetics. The film addresses trauma, memoty loss and reconstruction, and ends with the animation dissolving into live-action photographic footage of the aftermath of the Sabra and Shatila massacre during the 1982 Lebanon War. This move from animation to live action in the final scene is similar to the animated opening scene in Ki// Bill, for it acts as a visual bombshell. However, the significance is quite different. Whereas some may see the last scene in Waltz with Bashir as validating the otherwise animated film’s documentary value, others may see it as having the opposite effect. By using photographic footage at the end of the film as evidence of ‘the real’, the constructed nature of the animated representation is emphasised, and the reality portrayed in the rest of the film is potentially undermined. The changing documentary aesthetics also question the nature of the reality with which the film engages, accentuating the personal

Figure I2 Waltz with Bashir, animated by David Polonsky and directed by Ari Folman, 2008.

exploration of the protagonist’s lost memories rather than any objective search for facts. Furthermore, the animated imagery in Waltz with Bashir is indirectly used to question the difference between animation and photography, and to reflect upon different modes of representation that are accepted as credible, legitimate documentation. ‘It’s fine as long as you draw, but don’t film’, retorts one of the characters when asked about the possibility of recording their meeting. The imperative ‘don’t film’ articulates an ironic and central theme of the work, namely, that photography is ‘real’ whereas animation is not. Not only has animation been historically linked to the portrayal of fantasy worlds, it is often stylised very differently from photorealism, and its production is based on the construction rather than the capture of imagery. These features have contributed to animation’s reputation for artificiality, and thus explain why it may be considered as beyond the borders of ‘the real’,

Almost a decade later, these issues persist, as seen in the award-winning animated documentary Tower'® about America’s first mass shooting in 1966 at the University of Texas, Austin. Here, too, animation is combined with live action to interrogate the difficult question of memory and to emphasise the trauma and surreal quality of the events, like the portrayal of war in Waltz with Bashir’? Soldiers who were interviewed as part of the research for this book, reported that the representations of war in Waltz with Bashir actually seemed to them more, rather than less, realistic in comparison to live footage. They explained that only unconventional representation can come close to embodying the extraordinary and bizarre emotions inherent in these horrific events that cannot be compared to anything else, and they can only be understood by those who have experienced them personally. In this sense, the realism of both films inheres in their success in enabling viewers to grasp some aspect of reality that would otherwise be inaccessible.

However, in contrast to Waltz with Bashir, the varied documentary aesthetics in Zomer continually change, shifting between black and white photographic footage of the actual event, contemporary photographic colour footage of the location today, rotoscoped animation based on actors portraying the survivors’ experiences and interviews with survivors, to name but a few. Thus, in Zomer the distinction between animation and photography is blurred from the start, demonstrating the diversity and cross-pollination of documentary aesthetics today, as opposed to the stark contrast in Waltz with Bashir that underscores the assumed contradiction between fantasy-animation and fact-photography. It is noteworthy that Maitland described his apprehension about reaching out to survivors with: ‘Hey, you don’t know me, but I want to make a movie about the worst thing that ever happened to you 50 years ago, and it’s going to be a cartoon. Let’s talk!” His unease about people’s reactions to the portrayal of tragic events in animated form reveals that despite the recent rise of animated documentaries — and the vast range of topics animation now covers — something of animation’s assumed link to fiction, childhood, humour and light-heartedness persists.” Thus, questions related to the nature of the reality being depicted, and the most suitable means for its truthful portrayal, play a central role in these two films. Similar themes underpin the theoretical basis of Aximating Truth and the rise of animated documentary in contemporary culture.

Figure 1.3 Tower, directed by Keith Maitland, 2016.

I will paint a broad picture in order to contextualise this book. While the debates of the twentieth century involved the crisis of representation, it is now less clear where or if any boundaries exist between what is ‘real’ and what is represented. In today’s visual culture with its rapidly changing imaging technologies, the role of the visual requires reconsideration. For example, when people rely on animated gifs and emojis to communicate, they replace their actual physical appearance and facial expressions with simplified, cartooned, clichéd representations. As such, users amplify the role of animation in their daily interactions by using animation to symbolise ‘the self? and various modes of self-expression. Similarly, in the era of Snapchat filters, many choose to represent themselves as a cuddly animal, or an airbrushed perfect self, differentiating their actual physical appearance from these online visual portraits. The proliferation of such representations has even developed into ‘Snapchat dysmorphia’, a surprisingly common phenomena whereby millennials are seeking surgery to help them appear like the filtered, or ‘perfect’, versions of themselves, thus replicating image-manipulation techniques in real life. In the past, the physical appearance of referents influenced what was deemed to be a realistic visual representation, but today it is no longer clear what is shaping what. The changing relations between imagery and the reality it claims to depict are rapidly transforming. This is the result of contemporary technoculture where omnipresent screens prize visual means of communication and create dual or multiple realms of activity so that the physical domain, and the way it looks, becomes just one among many. The ubiquity and mundane use of non-photographic animated imagery to engage with current realities is also a result of constantly evolving imaging technologies, such as Nvidia’s 2018 GeForce RTX graphics chips, which create real-time, highly realistic animation that could be confused with photographic footage. Such technologies blur the boundaries between more traditionally accepted aesthetics of ‘the real’, like photography, and what animation has become today. Finally, the wider informational media environment of post-truth also contributes to these transformations in visual culture. When information overload prevails, animated imagery, which summarises and simplifies information and processes it through stylisation — even in exaggerated or inaccurate ways — has a growing place in today’s visual depictions of actual events. Why not trust animated documentary to portray current events when ‘news’ falls victim to disinformation, poor images and image manipulation, often resulting in the ubiquitous claim of ‘fake news’? Is animation in these cases any less real or credible than alternative depictions?

Realism is the believable articulation of ‘the real’, highlighting the fact that the status of representations’ veracity is in constant flux. What is deemed appropriate and reliable representation is a fundamental motif in documentary studies. Documentary is a genre that emerges in a time of crisis” and it is therefore no surprise that documentary is prevalent in today’s rapidly changing technological world characterised by post-9/11 surveillance, the refugee crisis, global pandemics, rising nationalism and unstable geo-political alliances, among many others. The continuing interest in documentaries shows that, despite the haziness of their claims to ‘truth’, there is still a belief that they are a credible way to search for meaning in troubled times. It therefore also makes perfect sense that realism is not only an aesthetic approach but also a political goal that aims to shape realities rather than merely reflect them. Many of the works discussed in this book are cinematic rather than film per se. The complexity and multiple uses of animation in contemporary culture demonstrate that animated documentary must be understood in proximity to other disciplines. Animating Truth therefore draws together film, art, cultural and media studies, posthumanism, gaming studies, semiotics and philosophy to shed new light on the topic of animated documentary, and underscore the fact that this interdisciplinary analysis benefits from a mix of media and fields.

The goal of the book is to advance the perspectives through which animated documentary is studied by presenting it in a way that differs from previous analyses, and by reaching into other fields of cultural enquiry by examining animation as a visual language that appears in various fields of non-fiction in contemporary visual culture. This ubiquitous use of animation results in its changing status as believable representation in documentary contexts since viewers have become accustomed to receiving factual content in animated form in a wide variety of fields, and they now rely on such content in their daily lives.

What follows includes a theoretical discussion of realism and the evidentiary status of animation through its technological, aesthetic, and narrative uses in contemporary documentary and non-fiction rather than the presentation of a historical model or argument as provided, for example, in Annabelle Honess Roe’s excellent 2013 book on the topic. As technological developments change the production and uses of animation in documentary, new theorisations are necessary. Interestingly, although the topic of experimental documentary has received scholarly attention in the fields of contemporary art and journalism, the related topics of animation, digital gaming and virtual culture are often overlooked.” At a time when both animation and documentary are changing, they transcend their emergent status as documentary animation cinema, and operate across broader platforms and contexts of digital expression, application and exhibition, thus further underscoring the need for new approaches. Although the scope may be ambitious, by extending the discussion across many disciplines and using a cross-platform analysis, the definitions of both ‘animation’ and ‘documentary’ are rethought, and the topic of animated documentary as a dominant form of non-fiction visualisation becomes pertinent to a variety of contemporary debates.” The parameters of this research include animated documentaries of physical events, those that focus on virtual realms, and works that reflect upon the combination of documentary and animation in varied ways.”

In today’s visual culture, animation is at an interesting turning point, poised between fiction and fact, perhaps combining the two. We are confronted with ubiquitous animated images, videos and gifs, for example, on smartphones, computers, in airplanes, doctors’ offices, schools, and many more, that are all used unctitically to represent or express real events, feelings, processes and interactions. This makes the topic important and timely. Animation’s traditional association with fiction has become less dominant, but that does not mean that animation is no longer a form of escapist, artificial, spectacular and often child-oriented entertainment.

In-flight safety films offer an example of the unique capabilities of animation to cross between fact and fiction. They are a useful means of conveying information and dealing with critical issues in a way that is clear, memorable and easily digestible.” However, they also highlight the possibility of a plane crash, yet no one reacts to them as such. Why? The reception of in-flight safety films illustrates how viewing animated non-fiction can isolate the cognitive internalisation of information (how to act in an emergency) from the emotional reaction (panic) to that information. Since animation is still associated with fantasy, it can be stylised in a particular way to appear friendly and unthreatening. In the context of international travel, which caters to various cultures and languages, animation more readily conveys the message. In today’s globalised, highly visual culture, new forms of imagery are needed to handle the avalanche of data we continually encounter, and thus the animation of data (or data visualisation) becomes a regular feature of contemporary information culture. In other words, animation today embodies a double allusion to both fiction and fact.

This mixture of fact and fiction is also apparent in recent fictional entertainment-based animated films that involve varying degrees of factual data visualisation. This is the case in Pixar/Disney’s Juside Out (2015), which personifies emotions and artistically visualises the structure of the mind, innovatively if loosely based on different psychological theories and neuropsychological findings.” Similarly, Disney’s Ralph Breaks the Internet (aka Wreck-It Ralph 2) (2018)” visualises the internet in a spatial-urban— architectural mode for the sake of the film’s narrative. Since animation excels at visually simplifying complex systems and processes, it is used pervasively as a means of data visualisation. These cinematic examples demonstrate how fiction, fused with factual infographic data visualisation, is expanding the borders between fact and fiction. This is particularly evident in animated documentaries.

Ralph Breaks the Internet is also a compelling example of the multi-layered use of animation in visual culture in which multiple realms are each depicted in a different animated style: (1) the supposedly non-animated ‘real’ world of people using the internet; (2) the users’ online animated representations portrayed as box-headed avatars; (3) the well-known fictional animation characters, such as Ralph himself or Disney’s princesses. It is worth noting that the princesses are quickly redressed less formally, thus distancing them from their fictional worlds through visual choices that represent them in a more contemporary manner, and thus also bearing closer resemblance to the internet users depicted in the film, and to the viewers themselves. Comparably, Ralph Breaks the Internets illustration of Twitter resembles the bluebirds in Disney’s 1937 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), merging recognisable fictional animated imagery of the past with contemporary animated data visualisation and popular logos. This complex use of animation blurs the difference between the representational choices most often used in the past and thus differentiates between the fantastical animated world and the live-action portrayal of the viewers’ world. In earlier examples, such as Mary Poppins (1964)*! and The Water Babies (1978), the break between fantastical worlds and the so-called ‘real’ was well-defined and stylistically unmistakable. By contrast, there is a merging of multiple animation styles that symbolise the physical ‘real’ world of the viewer, viewers’ online virtual actions and fantastical content, complicating the many uses, significations and meanings of animation. Ralph Breaks the Internetis but one example.

Although ‘animated documentary’ may still sound like a contradiction in terms to some, animation has often been used to illustrate what cannot be seen. Animation literally means ‘bringing to life’ and thus it expands the aesthetics of documentary by giving life to sounds and images that cannot be recorded, such as memories, subjective perspectives, nano-particles, scientific visualisations, censored events or non-physical online realities. Animation extends the boundaries of moving-image visual culture by providing the visual means for what may otherwise remain unrepresentable. In response to scholarly debates regarding the definition of animation, I define animated imagery as ‘movement only visible on-screen’, as explained in detail in Chapter 2. Some may criticise this definition for sidestepping the specificities of animation techniques and styles. I agree that specific styles matter, but they are not the emphasis of this book since they are as varied as the animators’ methods and levels of creativity. Rather than a semantic argument, this purposely broad view of animation emphasises the fact that it can no longer be considered from a nartow perspective since it is now visible in innumerable cultural fields. This definition aims to incorporate the many technologies and fields relevant to the topic, such as digital and data-driven art, gaming, architectural, scientific or forensic visualisations, virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) research, to name just some of the often under-represented fields in animation studies; it also includes the wider philosophical questions that these related disciplines raise. In other words, this definition intentionally expands the research paradigms involved in animated documentary analysis in an era when animation has become truly ‘pervasive’, to borrow from Suzanne Buchan’s 2013 aptly named book.” Animating Truth is not about sub-cultures of animation such as anime, which clearly influenced the above-mentioned films of Tarantino and Folman; rather, it explains how animation has been reinterpreted on a global mainstream level, becoming ubiquitous in everyday visualisations. The book focuses on the rise, and growing truth-value, of non-photorealistic animation in the form of diverse new digital imaging techniques that function as a stylistically diverse alternative to photorealism, with a shifting relationship to photography as the more traditional documentary aesthetics.

I recognise this is a broad visual paradigm shift in contemporary visual culture. Since animation can only be seen on screen rather than in the physical realm, it is ostensibly distinguished from photography: the argument follows that animation is generated while photographs are recorded. However, my central topic is the relation between the concurrent rise of animated documentary and of animation in digital media; my focus is on the technocultural context for the increase in, and changing believability of, animated images. Taken together with my definition of animation as movement that is visible only on screen, I situate screen culture and the moving-image nature of animation centre stage and choose to focus on the complex convergence of animation and photography, rather than on the historical correlation between animation and other visualisation methods, which would require an entirely separate project.

In fact, my definition points to the complex contemporary convergence of animation with photography. Digital imaging technologies blur distinctions between animation, live-action cinema, synthetic performances, postproduction visual effects and digital puppetry, among others. For example, James Cameron’s Avatar (2009)** used photorealistic synthetic CG sets/ environments into which live performances recorded through MoCap were incorporated, complicating the connection between the animated on-screen world, the off-screen world and the physical referent. This is also the case with animation techniques such as machinima and real-time animation, which all modify the relationship between animation and photography, and between animation and physical referents. These developments in image-production technologies potentially alter animation’s evidentiary status and resulting believability, requiring new theorisations of the topic and redefinitions of animation.

Animating Truth focuses on animated documentary because it is here that an enduring tension exists between animation as it was most often used in the past, in relation to fiction, and its growing use today, in non-fiction. Aware of such culturally conceived biases, many animated documentaries supplement novel animated imagery with supporting materials associated with documentary conventions, for example, audio interviews and/or photography, in an apparent effort to garner viewer acceptance. Understanding the proliferating uses of animation and its uncertain position as credible visualisation demands a reconsideration of the status of animation in contemporary visual culture.