Animating Unpredictable Effects

Uncanny computer-generated animations of splashing waves, billowing smoke clouds, and characters’ flowing hair have become a ubiquitous presence on screens of all types since the 1980s. This Open Access book charts the history of these digital moving images and the software tools that make them. Unpredictable Visual Effects uncovers an institutional and industrial history that saw media industries conducting more private R&D as Cold War federal funding began to wane in the late 1980s. In this context studios and media software companies took concepts used for studying and managing unpredictable systems like markets, weather, and fluids and turned them into tools for animation. Unpredictable Visual Effects theorizes how these animations are part of a paradigm of control evident across society, while at the same time exploring what they can teach us about the relationship between making and knowing

Simulation FX: Cinema and the R&D Complex

This study looks at the ongoing development of tools and practices used to animate nonlinear physical phenomena, such as the crash of ocean waves or the movement of human hair, in the visual effect and animation industries. These tools and practices are developed in a nexus between public funding, research universities, the film industry, and various other sectors, such as aerospace and meteorology. This study investigates how technological development became integrated with film production, and in turn how epistemic paradigms were shared between the film industry, scientific research institutions and other industries. At the heart of these animation tools and practices, and the networks of institutions that developed them, is a way of thinking that seeks to make use of unpredictable nonlinear complexity by shaping it toward specific applications. I observe this in the way animation and visual effect studios seek the realistic appearance of nonlinear natural movement through simulation, while also implementing technologies and practices to direct the look of these simulations. I also observe this in a variety of related examples, from the way the concept of research and development unites science and application, to the way management science promotes hands off approaches that preserve the unpredictable nature of creative work. My methods consist of charting the circulation of ideas, technologies, moving images and people through contact zones such as the computer science special interest group ACM SIGGRAPH, using archival research of trade communications, scholarly publications and conference proceedings, as well as interviews with industry workers

Never Before Seen: Spectacle, Staging, and Story in Wildlife Film's Blue-Chip Renaissance

The topic of this dissertation is wildlife film and its representation of animal behaviour. I identify a blue-chip renaissance of wildlife documentary filmmaking in the early twenty-first century featuring conventional natural history subject matter, stunning visuals, unprecedented costs, an extended rhetoric of authenticity, and an emphasis on novel footage of animal behaviour. The blue-chip renaissance is a fertile site for investigating wildlife films as hybrid objects, as these films inhabit a set of major conceptual tensions between nature and culture; entertainment and education; and authenticity and artifice. In a review of extant literature (Chapter 1) I examine how those conceptual boundaries have been permeable and productive for scholars of wildlife film and related topics in multiple disciplines, motivating this dissertations interdisciplinary approach. I argue in Chapter 2 that the blue-chip renaissances visual spectacle is not an entertaining impediment to education, but rather a route to immersion and affective knowing, drawing from the legacy of natural history display. In Chapter 3, I analyze working filmmakers attitudes about staging practices in wildlife documentaries, a controversial topic that influences their professional identity as storytellers and observers of nature. Chapter 4 offers a taxonomy of the representation within the blue-chip renaissance and its authoritative public demonstration of nature, arguing that these films model and simulate a variety of real and theoretical entities and processes. In Chapter 5, I show that the authenticity of the blue-chip renaissances portrayal of nature is predicated on the extensive use of behind-the-scenes making-of documentaries employing observational realism. I conclude by exploring the challenges of locating any definitive cultural impacts of wildlife films, and offer instead directions for further research into wildlife films as experienced science communication

From analogy-making to modelling : the history of analog computing as a modelling technology

Today, modern computers are based on digital technology. However, during the decades after 1940, digital computers were complemented by the separate technology of analog computing. But what was analog computing, what were its merits, and who were its users? This thesis investigates the conceptual and technological history of analog computing. As a concept, analog computing represents the entwinement of a complex pre-history of meanings, including calculation, modelling, continuity and analogy. These themes are not only landmarks of analog's etymology, but also represent the blend of practices, ways of thinking, and social ties that together comprise an 'analog culture'. The first half of this thesis identifies how the history of this technology can be understood in terms of the two parallel themes of calculation and modelling. Structuring the history around these themes demonstrates that technologies associated with modelling have less representation in the historiography. Basing the investigation around modelling applications, the thesis investigates the formation of analog culture. The second half of this thesis applies the themes of modelling and information generation to understand analog use in context. Through looking at examples of analog use in academic research, oil reservoir modelling, aeronautical design, and meteorology, the thesis explores why certain communities used analog and considers the relationship between analog and digital in these contexts. This study demonstrates that analog modelling is an example of information generation rather than information processing. Rather than focusing on the categories of analog and digital, it is argued that future historical scholarship in this field should give greater prominence to the more general theme of modelling

From analogy-making to modelling : the history of analog computing as a modelling technology

Today, modern computers are based on digital technology. However, during the decades after 1940, digital computers were complemented by the separate technology of analog computing. But what was analog computing, what were its merits, and who were its users? This thesis investigates the conceptual and technological history of analog computing. As a concept, analog computing represents the entwinement of a complex pre-history of meanings, including calculation, modelling, continuity and analogy. These themes are not only landmarks of analog's etymology, but also represent the blend of practices, ways of thinking, and social ties that together comprise an `analog culture'. The first half of this thesis identifies how the history of this technology can be understood in terms of the two parallel themes of calculation and modelling. Structuring the history around these themes demonstrates that technologies associated with modelling have less representation in the historiography. Basing the investigation around modelling applications, the thesis investigates the formation of analog culture. The second half of this thesis applies the themes of modelling and information generation to understand analog use in context. Through looking at examples of analog use in academic research, oil reservoir modelling, aeronautical design, and meteorology, the thesis explores why certain communities used analog and considers the relationship between analog and digital in these contexts. This study demonstrates that analog modelling is an example of information generation rather than information processing. Rather than focusing on the categories of analog and digital, it is argued that future historical scholarship in this field should give greater prominence to the more general theme of modelling.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceUniversity of Warwick. Dept. of Computer Science (DCS)GBUnited Kingdo

Advances in Computational Social Science and Social Simulation

Aquesta conferència és la celebració conjunta de la "10th Artificial Economics Conference AE", la "10th Conference of the European Social Simulation Association ESSA" i la "1st Simulating the Past to Understand Human History SPUHH".Conferència organitzada pel Laboratory for Socio­-Historical Dynamics Simulation (LSDS-­UAB) de la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.Readers will find results of recent research on computational social science and social simulation economics, management, sociology,and history written by leading experts in the field. SOCIAL SIMULATION (former ESSA) conferences constitute annual events which serve as an international platform for the exchange of ideas and discussion of cutting edge research in the field of social simulations, both from the theoretical as well as applied perspective, and the 2014 edition benefits from the cross-fertilization of three different research communities into one single event. The volume consists of 122 articles, corresponding to most of the contributions to the conferences, in three different formats: short abstracts (presentation of work-in-progress research), posters (presentation of models and results), and full papers (presentation of social simulation research including results and discussion). The compilation is completed with indexing lists to help finding articles by title, author and thematic content. We are convinced that this book will serve interested readers as a useful compendium which presents in a nutshell the most recent advances at the frontiers of computational social sciences and social simulation researc