Japanese Animation and New Media
Week Six: Chapter Ten: Structures of Depth
The course began with one-point perspective and Cartesianism as one of the dominant regimes of modern visuality. And I asked, ‘What happens to one-point perspective when movement enters the picture?’ In fact, the first definition of cinematism, borrowed from Paul Virilio, linked it directly to one-point perspective and the movement. Virilio calls cinematism an art of the engine, because it is all about a form of motion into depth in which the viewing position is aligned with the engine or some other rapidly moving technological entity — the POV of the bullet, the train, the jet.
Although one-point perspective is frequently presented as the most scientifically accurate and rational structure of representation, it has its limits. For instance, it tends to distort the proportions of objects closer to us—anamorphosis or the fish-bowl effect. Such effects were commonly hidden or eliminated in classical paintings done in one-point perspective—to sustain the rational ideals and practices associated with it, that is, to sustain Cartesianism.
In other words, one-point perspective doesn’t naturally work out in all instances, universally. You have to fiddle with the elements and parameters.
Similarly cinematism doesn’t just happen. In fact, in film, animation, and video games, presenting movement into depth in accordance with one-point perspective and Cartesian geometry is not necessarily easy to produce or sustain. In cel animation especially, the use of animation stand tends to work against it to some extent. And so we saw how producing ‘cinematistic’ movement into depth in animation demands working with a range of techniques, such as compositing, character animation, and mise-en-scène.
In the context of Miyazaki’s animations, we looked at how their use of animation techniques negotiated the relation between cinematism and animetism in favour of animetism. And I stressed how the tendency toward animetism in these animations went hand in hand with a critique of the modern technological condition and its ballistic technologies of perception and destruction. Miyazaki’s animation counter not only weapons of mass destruction but also the perceptual mode of world destruction (cinematism).
Because Miyazaki’s films largely use animetism to minimize the perceptual destruction of cinematism, one might get the impression that animetism is nothing but resistance to cinematism. Animetism in Miyazaki does take on some very positive connotations: a human openness to Nature, an openness of Nature, and a freer relation to technology. Yet, unlike cinematism, which is associated with one-point perspective, we have not yet associated animetism with any sort of structure or a regime of visuality. The basic question of this chapter is, “What is the structure or regime of perception associated with animetism?”
To answer this question, let’s turn to Japanese artist Murakami Takashi whose ‘superflat’ art is presented as being a different regime from Cartesian perspective.
