Material Culture Session 1

Toy Story was the first full length feature film to be made using CGI technology. Roland Barthes had the idea of the indexical relationship to the real meaning that although films might be fictional they have a physical connection to reality through the process of photography. This is a new kind of materiality where there is only a connection to the idea of the object rather than a direct interface between object and representation. But I'm not sure that this is unique to computer animation since any kind of animation works on the process of imagining how an object would move and then drawing it, furthermore this could apply to still images not just moving ones. I suppose the point is that Barthes was arguing against the idea that fictions are unreal because the fictions presented in film are bound to reality through photography but then any kind of representation that doesn't draw from a direct reference is unreal, so I don't think that toy story is a unique example. It is however unique in that it generates an entire world of fictional space, unlike traditional animation where characters are independent of the background in 3D animation the background and the characters are all part of the same environment and constructed space. So perhaps this invention of space does not come from a physical connection to the real. Space in computers is created out of a necessity for space to behave in a certain way, walls contain interiors and the sky contains exteriors, therefore it does not come from a real world visual reference it comes from a reference to the physics of space. Also it could be argued that the process of animation is dependant on the photographing of the cells so it is still tied to reality in that way whereas there is no process of converting a real object into a film in digital, it starts in the computer and it finished in the computer.

What is the difference between Taxonomy and Typology?

taxonomy (plural taxonomies)
1. (systematics, uncountable) The science of finding, describing, classifying and naming organisms.
2. The classification in a hierarchical system.

typology (plural typologies)
1. The systematic classification of the types of something according to their common characteristics.
2. (archaeology) The result of the classification of things according to their characteristics.

So Taxonomy is a science whereas typology is a way of carrying out that science by grouping things together according to their similarities, so what would be a taxonomy without typology? Perhaps classifying things by their context rather than their content.

Is Taxonomy a good thing? What is the use of classifying things? One of its negative implications is that it can blind us to the connections between things, because apes were classified as separate to humanity we failed to realise that we had evolved from them. Because we categorise a chair as different to a work of art we might fail to see its true beauty. Because we sometimes classify art as different from popular culture we can end up looking past things that are actually more significant in favour of things that are less accessible.