Frontiers in Art Research, 2024, 6(11); doi: 10.25236/FAR.2024.061108.
Wenxin Shi
Department of Art and Design, National Tsing Hua University (Taiwan), Hsinchu, Taiwan, 302005, China
The Harvard Sensory Anthropology Lab produces a series of experimental ethnographic documentaries, in which they hook up a camera, such as a Go pro, to any animal, such as a sheep or a fish, to allow the viewer to become embodied in the animal's point of view in order to realize the anthropological study. Lucien Castaing-Taylor's anthropological documentary on sensory ethnography reinvents the subject of life by utilizing sensory-emphasizing photographic techniques that make all life appear purely visual and material. This aesthetic feature is aesthetically overlapping with the anthropomorphic animations produced by Disney and Pixar, such as Elemental and Zootopia, which incorporate the subjective feelings of the material or the animal in the process of anthropomorphization. Sensory ethnographic documentaries lead us to reflect on the relationship between matter/animals and humans. This paper will compare and analyze the two aesthetic features.
Ethnographic documentary; Observational documentary; Anthropomorphic animation
Wenxin Shi. The Aesthetics of Vital Materiality in Sensory Ethnography and the Aesthetics of Anthropomorphization in Animated Cinema. Frontiers in Art Research (2024) Vol. 6, Issue 11: 52-58. https://doi.org/10.25236/FAR.2024.061108.
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