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Nele Noppe

Call for papers: The Artificial Life of Film: Dolls, Puppets, Automata, and Cyborgs in... - 0 views

  •  Proposed Panel for SCMS Conference, Los Angeles, March 17-21  The Artificial Life of Film: Dolls, Puppets, Automata, and Cyborgs in Cinema  Organizer Names:  Deborah Levitt, Assistant Professor, Culture and Media Studies,  Eugene Lang College, The New School  Allison de Fren, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow,  Ammerman Center for  Arts & Technology, Connecticut College  Summary: From the early films of Georges Méliès, Fritz Lang, and the  Surrealist movement to Blade Runner, Being John Malkovich, Ghost in  the Shell, and Lars and the Real Girl, the cinema has had an enduring  fascination with artificial humans due to their unique ability to  picture the tensions between motion and stasis, animation and  inanimation, humanity and artificiality, the real and the virtual,  and the vital and the mechanical. Artificial bodies have also made  diverse appearances in film theory, from the "spiritual automaton"of  Gilles Deleuze to Roland Barthes' meditations on a cinematic  automaton in Camera Lucida to the broad field of reflections on  cyborgs and/in cinema. This panel seeks to interrogate any or all of  these conjugations of cinema and artificial lives — material and  philosophical, live action or animated, in fiction or documentary. We  are interested in the kinds of performativities engendered by these  ambivalent bodies: their uncanniness, their ontological  destabilizations, their epistemological games of masking and  unmasking. Papers might also consider how artificiality is mobilized  within particular genres or what kinds of meanings accumulate around  artificial bodies in relation to gender or race. We are interested in  how these figures help to construct a new genealogy of audiovisual  culture, one that could illuminate cinema's digital or animatic  present and future, as well as connections to various moments in the  historical long durée of dolls, puppets, and automata.  Please send an abstract of up to 300 words, five key references, and  a brief bio to levittd@newschool.edu and adefren@conncoll.edu by  August 10th.
Nele Noppe

Mobilizing the Imagination in Everyday Play: The Case of Japanese Media Mixes Mizuko Ito - 0 views

  • A notion of participation leads to a conceptualization of the imagination as collectively rather than individually experienced and produced.
  • While the boosters, debunkers, and the panicked may seem to be operating under completely different frames of reference, what they share is the tendency to fetishize technology as a force with its own internal logic standing outside of history, society and culture. The problem with all of these stances is that they fail to recognize that technologies are in fact embodiments, stabilizations, and concretizations of existing social structure and cultural meanings, growing out of an unfolding history as part of a necessarily altered and contested future.
  • I propose three conceptual constructs that define trends in new media form, production, and genres of participation: Convergence of old and new media forms; authoring through personalization and remix, and hypersociality as a genre of participation.
Ariane Beldi

Amazon.com: Popular Culture, Globalization and Japan (Asia's Transformations) (97804153... - 1 views

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    Not really new, but might be useful to have on one's bookshelves!
Nele Noppe

Moe and the Potential of Fantasy in Post-Millenial Japan - 2 views

  • If kawaii, or the aesthetic of cute, is the longing for the freedom and innocence of youth, manifesting in the junior and high school girl in uniform (Kinsella 1995), then moe is the longing for the purity of characters pre-person, manifesting in androgynous semi and demi human forms. This is called 'jingai,' or outside human, and examples include robots, aliens, dolls and anthropomorphized animals, all stock characters in the moe pantheon. A specific example would be nekomimi, or cat-eared characters. More generally, in order to achieve the desired affect, moe characters are reduced to tiny deformed 'little girl' images with emotive, pupil-less animal eyes
  • I argue fantasy characters offer virtual possibilities and affect
  • Moe is also used by fujoshi, zealous female fans of yaoi, a genre of manga featuring male homosexual romance. However, the word moe indicates a response to fantasy characters, not a specific style, character type or relational pattern. While some things are more likely than others to inspire moe, this paper will focus mainly on the response itself rather than the forms that inspire it.
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  • Both otaku and fujoshi
  • The moe character is a 'body without organs' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987), and the response to its virtual potentials is affect.
  • Massumi argues affect is a moment of unformed and unstructured potential (Massumi 2002). The experience, what he calls an 'intensity,' is outside of logical language and conscious control. Moe provides a word to express affect, or to identify a form that resonates and can trigger an intensity.
  • It is for this reason that moe is consistently misunderstood as first and foremost images of young girls instead of a response to virtual potentials
  • In the field interacting with otaku and fujoshi, I was constantly confronted by the concept of moe, and found it necessary to engage it.
  • These are both men and their discourse centers on male otaku, but I will argue from them a more general theory, applied later in the paper to fujoshi structures of desire.
  • Honda, a youth-oriented novelist and self-styled moe critic, defines moe as 'imaginary love'
  • the salient point is his judgment that a relationship with a mediated character or material representations of it is preferable to an interpersonal relationship.
  • the moe man is feminized
  • While recognizing the conservative nature of otaku sexuality, Azuma attempts to account for the schizophrenic presence of perversion in the moe image. For Azuma, otaku are postmodern subjects with multiple personalities engendered by their environment and enthusiastic media consumption
  • To feel moe for all characters in all situations, the narrative connecting characters or moments in time is de-emphasized.
  • cat ears,
  • response is unconnected with 'reality' and thus offers new potentials to construct and express affects.
  • Separating their desire from reality allowed for a new form of affect called moe.
  • Simply stated, moe is about unbounded potential.
  • Moe is affect in response to fantasy forms that emerged from information-consumer culture in Japan in the late stages of capitalism.
  • conditioning of young girls into 'pure consumers'
  • Such a space is disconnected from social and political concerns, and exists for the preservation of the individual.
  • the media and consumption feeding into moe is a specific sort centered on affect.
  • Manga scholar Itou Gou argues that since the end of the 1980s characters in anime, manga and videogames became so appealing that fans desired them even without stories (Itou 2005). Ito dubs such character types 'kyara,' distinct from characters (kyarakutaa) embedded in narratives.
  • Proof of this can be found in the rise of 'parody' doujinshi,
  • The doll-like and semi-human Ayanami became the single most popular and influential character in the history of otaku anime; fans still isolate parts of the character to amplify and rearticulate in fan-produced works to inspire moe.
  • In works featuring these characters, the original work functions as a starting point, and the extended process of producing and consuming moe takes place among fans in online discussions and videos, fan-produced comics (doujinshi), costume roleplay (cosplay) and figures.
  • virtual potentiality
  • That the moe form, the body without organs, is outside personal and social frames is precisely why it triggers affect.
  • 'moe otaku' a superficial fixation on surfaces and accelerated consumption of disposable moe kyara, impetus for him to declare this younger generation culturally 'dead'
  • One man I spoke with said, 'Moe is a wish for compassionate human interaction. Moe is a reaction to characters that are more sincere and pure than human beings are today.' Similarly, another man described moe as 'the ultimate expression of male platonic love.' This, he said, was far more stable and rewarding than 'real' love could ever be. Manga artist Akamatsu Ken stresses that moe is the 'maternal love' (boseiai) latent in men,[xxi] and a 'pure love' (junsui na ai) unrelated to sex, the desire to be calmed when looking at a female infant (biyoujo wo mite nagomitai) (Akamatsu 2005). 'The moe target is dependent on us for security (a child, etc.) or won't betray us (a maid, etc.). Or we are raising it (like a pet)' (Akamatsu 2005). This desire to 'nurture' (ikusei) characters is extremely common among fans. Further, moe is about the moment of affect and resists changes ('betrayal') in the future, or what Akamatsu refers to as a 'moratorium' (moratoriamu). Moe media is approached as something of a sanctuary from society (Okada 2008), and as such is couched in a discourse of purity.
  • I will now demonstrate how it is further possible to reduce people to characters, or to reduce reality to fantasy in pursuit of moe.
  • Association with the two-dimensional world, and lack of depth or access in the three-dimensional world, makes a maid moe.[
  • The appeal of the maid cannot purely be sexual: As many as 35 per cent of customers are women
  • this arose in Japan in the late stages of capitalism as a result of shifts in consumer-information society
  • bias towards male fans of anim
  • aoi erases the female presence because fans say female-male or even female-female couples[xxxvi] are too 'raw' (namanamashii). Put another way, the reality of relationships is removed from yaoi to make the moe response possible.
  • the ambiguous yaoi 'male' is quite literally a body without organs
  • Many other fujoshi I spoke with dated men even as they imagined possibilities of coupling them as characters with other men.[xl] As Saitou points out, the reality of heterosexual relationships and virtual possibilities of homosexual couplings are separate and coexistent (Saitou 2007). Journalist Sugiura Yumiko explains this as the crucial difference between fujoshi and otaku, who approach fantasy as an alternative for things that they actually want but cannot realize in this world (Sugiura 2006).[xli] A fujoshi, for example, would not 'marry' a two-dimensional character the way some otaku advocate;
  • Sugiura is importantly highlighting that fantasy and reality are separate and coexistent, but this is widespread in moe culture and not solely a female quality.[xlii] As much as male otaku boast of their two-dimensional wives, they often do so with levity as a self-conscious performance
  • While it is true that men tend to feel moe for single characters that they can possess while women feel moe for relationships or character couplings, this broad difference is fast disappearing. In truth, the media popular among so-called 'moe otaku' in recent years has come to resemble yaoi aesthetics: multiple girls in a nostalgic or fantastic world with minimal male presence and heightened emphasis on relationships and emotions
  • In all cases, the database (Azuma 2009) is present. The elements that constitute and indicate a certain type of top or bottom, for example glasses or hairstyle or height, are predetermined; any given top or bottom is a construct of defined character traits and behavior.
  • One of the most recognizable features of the moe phenomenon is the anthropomorphization of objects into objects of desire. Otaku turn cats, war machines, household appliances and even men of historical significance into beautiful little girls to trigger moe. Reality is flattened, and from it emerge polymorphous forms of stimulation. Similarly, fujoshi can rearticulate anything into beautiful boys and sexualized yaoi relations. Moe characters can be based on a written description or drawn image, a physical person or even anthropomorphized animals, plants and objects.
  • The erotic fantasy effectively re-mystified their world, adding a layer of potential to the mundane (the very ground under their feet!) and making the familiar queer and exciting. Latent potential so unlocked, the three friends replayed the moe relationship across other potential players such as shampoo and conditioner, knife and spoon, salt and pepper.
  • More startling and subversive is 'moe politics' (seiji moe), where national histories, international relations and imposing world leaders are reduced to moe characters across which yaoi romance can be read.
  • It should be noted that Hetaria was written by a man, and these sorts of stories are becoming increasingly popular among young men known as 'fudanshi' (rotten boys).
  • it precisely because it is pure that it can give birth to such perverse and polymorphous possibilities.
Ariane Beldi

Modern Art Asia - Reviews, Commentary and Peer-Reviewed Articles on Asian Art - 1 views

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    Modern Art Asia is a new journal dedicated to the arts of Asia from the eighteenth century to today, presenting postgraduate research from historical perspectives and international news on Asian art. For the rising generation of Asian art scholars, these works exist in a globalized interdisciplinary context at the intersection of scholarship, criticism, and the market. Founded to address the need within art history and art journalism for a space dedicated to the arts of Asia, Modern Art Asia combines peer-reviewed articles with insightful commentary and the latest exhibition reviews from international correspondents, providing a new forum for exchange between scholars that crosses the boundaries of traditional academic disciplines, and engages with a general readership through the addition of journalistic writing on art.
Ariane Beldi

Le débat sur la fanfiction relancé ? - Elbakin.net - 5 views

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    Diana Gabaldon (ci-contre) et George R.R. Martin, tous les deux opposés à laisser ce genre de liberté aux apprentis écrivains, viennent en effet de relancer les discussions autour du sujet.
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    This is in French, but it is about a debate on fanfiction, in which authors hold varying views on this phemonemon.
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    In my opinion, they haven't launched a debate so much as joined other commercially published authors such as Anne Rice and Lee Goldberg in endlessly repeating the same extremely wobbly arguments against amateur writing. They misunderstand intellectual property and the creative process in a variety of ways -e.g. by assuming that somebody using a character they created is the same as somebody stealing a physical object, and by labeling their creations 'original' while dismissing fanfic writers as people unable to come up with good ideas of their own. Not impressive at all, but unfortunately, big-name authors decrying the defilement of their creations by supposed thieving amateur pornographers make good media copy :P This post does a rather good rebuttal of the arguments usually raised against fanfic by enumerating commercial works that are just as "derivative" as fic: http://bookshop.dreamwidth.org/999259.html
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    To tell the truth, I'm not very knowledgeable in this field of copyrights issues. I'm just starting and need to read more. So, when I was tipped about these blog posts by people on Facebook, I thought it might be interesting for you and others. But apparently, from what you're saying, they are just going over and over the same old arguments. I'll check your link and we'll keep it for later thinking. ;-)
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    It is an excellent post! I love the section about Virgile being a fanboy from Homer! I had to translate and learn Chant 6 of the Aeneid for my final high school exam! She could have added that Dante Alighieri is a huge fanboy of Virgile (he actually considers him as his spiritual master, despite the fact that more than 1000 years separates them both).
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    Oh, it's a very interesting topic -my favourite ;) I'm doing a lot of research on the position of fanworks in cultural production at the moment. IMHO, published authors who rail against fanfic seem to be rather hung-up on an author-as-God idea that is terribly outdated today, has never had much basis in reality in the first place, and does nothing at all to promote creativity. Also, the arguments about the supposed harm fanfic inflicts are just plain silly. There certainly isn't any economic harm (ficcers are your biggest fans and very likely to buy your products and attract new readers), and somebody using your character is not the same as stealing your car because your character remains intact and available to you no matter how many fics are written (or how sexually explicit these fics are). Er, I'm going to stop before I go on a five-page rant. Have some more links: http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/007464.html is good and short, as is http://www.kristinabusse.com/cv/research/ip09.html (and many other articles on that site). http://www.tushnet.com/legalfictions.pdf talks about fanfic and copyright in more detail.
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    Thank you for all these links. I'm keeping them as well!
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    No prob! I'll send more if you're interested (Gabaldon generated a huge amount of intelligent rebuttal posts in the last couple of days), but let me know, I don't want to bury you in readings just because it's my personal favourite ranting topic ;)
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    Well, that would be with pleasure. I might not be able to read everything through and through immediately, but I'll keep the urls in my Diigo and return to it later. But I'm definitely interested in those issues. I also have a colleague who's into this as well, so I'll forward these resources to her. And she is supposed to write a dissertation about Shakespeare, but she doesn't know what! She feels that everything that could be written about him has been written. Maybe, there would be something for her to dig in these.
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    Maybe your friend would be interested in Elisabeth Woledge? She works for the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust (http://www.shakespeare.org.uk/content/view/428/439/) and has done a lot of work on fanfic, too. She gave a very interesting keynote speech for a fanfic conference last February (abstract here: http://www.mos.umu.se/forskning/cyberekon/symposiumabstracts.htm) in which she discussed Shakespeare as well. I believe the keynote is archived on http://stream.humlab.umu.se/, -search for Woledge and it should come up. As for the Gabaldon issue, you can find a lot of links to discussions about her statements in this post on the Metafandom community: http://www.journalfen.net/community/metafandom/142097.html
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    Woaw! I'm printing all these references and will bring it to her later this afternoon! We might be able to take a coffee together. I will also of course keep all these links! This is really great! Thank you so much!
Ariane Beldi

MANGA: Histoire et Univers de la bande dessinée japonaise - 0 views

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    Site consacré au livre et à ses sources.
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    This is only in French unfortunately, but this website contains references and sources that have been used in the lates book on manga by Jean-Marie Bouissou, specialist of Japan at the Center for International Research and Studies in Paris.
Ariane Beldi

Professor Munakata's fantastic museum piece - Times Online - 1 views

    • Ariane Beldi
       
      I hope Hayao Miyazaki isn't reading this! The last term he'd use to qualify his animation cinema is "anime". In general terms, "anime" is used to refer to animated series for TV broadcast and video distribution. For a journalist who claims to have an inside knowledge of this audiovisual univers, that's quite a confusion to make!
  • The manga aesthetic has spawned a film genre called anime, such as Spirited Away
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