Kyle O Neill
This project is an animated short that purposefully employs the aesthetic qualities of the digital screen to take on a technological or systemic perspective. The film follows its central character as they search for connection in a cold and sterile world. The unique haptic qualities of the digital screen are used in this project to de-subjectivise the human experience, revealing the normally invisible connection between emerging technologies, surveillance and biometric extraction. Our interactions with these systems transform us, creating new modalities of life. This idea is externalized in the film through the characters' physical movements, each representing different "forms" of life.
The aim of this project was to explore how animation could uniquely engage with issues around digital screens and contemporary screen cultures. Contemporary, popular animation is created, shared and encountered almost entirely on digital screens. It is in this space that animation has to exist alongside countless other media, tools and information - all of varying levels of importance and sensitivity. Our relationships with these devices are dynamic and come with a high degree of interactivity and input on our part.
To accomplish this, I grounded my project in the theoretical and philosophical frameworks around animation and film articulated by Deborah Levitt, Mark Fisher and Patricia Pisters. They identify the formal qualities and imagery associated with early digital cinema as indicative of a broader experience of digital screen cultures and our relationship with emerging technologies. I also used David O'Reilly's essay on Basic Animation Aesthetics as a jumping off point for developing the film's methodology.
Every creative decision in my film was grounded in academic research. The overarching thread of the film was to illustrate the "life-image" concept articulated by Deborah Levitt in the context of digital screen scultures. The film's visual aesthetic was designed to replicate the look of non-professional or consumer-grade animation softwares in the same vein of digital live-action films being shot with consumer video cameras or incorporating surveillance aesthetics. The biometric extraction angle of the film was informed by discussions with Olga Cronin of the ICCL and her research on Facial Recognition Technology and it's implementation in Ireland. The sound and music was composed electronically by my brother.
Kyle is an animator and video editor based in Kildare, Ireland. His work explores the potential of animation to take on non-human perspectives and portray the new forms of life created by our interactions with larger systems that are normally invisible to us.
