Re: Hacking actors

[Doyle Saylor <djsaylor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Greetings Economists,
The NYTs article cited by Ian Murray is bizarre reaction to computer
animation.  What it exploits is an appearance of a fear of job loss by
actors to computer images, but is that what is going on?

The term, Photo Realist, is something arising historically in the U.S.
culture out of U.S. "realist" painting around 1970 in regard to a slavish
technical reproduction of photographic sources of images (which Engels would
have laughed at as Zola-like or slavishly tied to empirical knowledge at the
expense of social thinking).  In movies computing power to paint enough
detail to match human facial images is very demanding of the computer system
overall power.  That is "the" problem frame by frame reproduction of human
faces for movies creates for the industry.  The issue raised by Tom Hanks
about his felt loss of rights to images that might be used without his
control with some artifically generated image of Tom Hanks is not about how
much computer animation looks like a human face.  Photo Realist animation is
really about the common communal need to communicate in a conversational way
where we no longer are face to face.   The animation can only succeed to the
degree it fulfills that conversational role.

"Movie Stars Fear Inroads by Upstart digital Actors", NYT July 8, 2001 page
one,
"The eyes are one of the single biggest things that make people alive," said
Andy Jones, the animation director.

The issue photo realism of movie animation explores is how to communicate
through 'avatars' or 'conversational agents' that artificially generate
emotional and gestural information in human communication.

A movie succeeds (through directly showing body labor) where writing can not
carry visual facial information related to emotional content of human
communication.  A movie does not share attention with the audience (is not a
real dialogue with another person about the content of the movie).  Being
able to artificially convey that information in information technology
attacks the issue (of reproducing communication specific to a persons face)
in how two human beings share attention in common work projects when not
face to face.  Such Photo Realist animation merely demonstrates that
communicating such information is not exclusive to direct face to face
contact with human bodies.

In Hollywood they know that making a movie is,

NYT July 8, 2001 page 16
""Filmmaking is always going to be a collaborative art," the director Ron
Howard said"....

What is ignored in the above term, 'collaborative', and that the NYT staff
does not make clear is that human beings share 'work' processes through
communication and that knowing facial expression and where attention is
focused is necessary to get work done.  That communication is about the
labor process of sharing attention so that people can work together
socially.

That is why it is necessary to have human beings work along side these
animation processes in movie making "photo realist animation" since the
attention to common labor processes is the very core of how works gets done.

    We cannot work together without conversational information, nor can the
dialectic be independent of conversational structures.  Collaboration is
about the working together that we can do through shared attention.  The
NYTs article elides the necessity to understand animation of faces as deeply
related to shared attention in communication processes and the need to
converse to get work done.
thanks,
Doyle Saylor