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Alan Cholodenko

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About

Dr Alan Cholodenko is former Head of Department and Senior Lecturer in Film and Animation Studies in the Department of Art History at The University of Sydney, where where he is now Honorary Associate and Honorary Fellow of the university. He has pioneered in the articulation of animation theory, film theory and ‘poststructuralist’ and ‘postmodernist’ French thought, in particular that of Jacques Derrida and Jean Baudrillard. He organised THE ILLUSION OF LIFE—the world’s first international conference on animation—in Sydney (1988), edited the anthology of that event—The Illusion of Life: Essays on Animation—the world’s first anthology of scholarly essays theorising animation (1991), as well as organized a sequel conference (1995)—THE LIFE OF ILLUSION—and edited the sequel anthology—The Illusion of Life 2: More Essays on Animation (2007). His essay ‘The Animation of Cinema’ won the 2010 McLaren-Lambart Award from the Society for Animation Studies. Among his more recent publications are ‘“First Principles” of Animation’ in Animating Film Theory, ed. Karen Beckman, Duke University Press, 2014; ‘“Computer Says No”, or: The Erasure of the Human’, in Erasure: The Spectre of Cultural Memory, eds. Brad Buckley and John Conomos, Libri Publishing, England, 2015; ‘The Expanding Universe of Animation (Studies)’, Animation Studies, vol. 11, 2016; and ‘“Like Tears in Rain”: The Crypt, the Haunted House, of Animation and Memory in the Era of Hyperreality’, Animation Studies, vol. 15, 2020. He has presented papers at many universities and conferences internationally, and his work has been published in a number of languages, most recently Chinese. His numerous publications can be found on Academia.

Areas of Focus

Theory of animation, especially as related to the global (re)animator, the computer, which, with its agent–hypermedia–has reanimated reality and all in it as hyperreal hyperspecial hypereffect (HHH), as total hypervirtual hypereffect (THH).

 

Hyperreality, as theorized by Baudrillard, is the clone, the simulacral double, of reality. It is where Special Effects (SFX), in their visual screen form, have morphed, metastasised, into their hypervisual, hyperscreen form, Visual Effects (VFX)––VFX for Cholodenko the visual, screen form of hyperanimated, hyperanimatic hyperreality, virtual reality, as HHH, as THH, making VFX the hyperreal hyperspecial hypervisual hypereffect (HHHH), the total hypervirtual hypervisual hypereffect (THHH), of the computer as hyperanimated, hyperanimatic reanimator of the visual–of the visual as hypervisual, that is, more nonvisual than nonvisual, and the nonvisual as more visual than visual–of the image as hyperimage and the screen as hyperscreen, where image is more screen than screen and screen more image than image.

Relevant Research

Apocalyptic Animation: In the Wake of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Godzilla and Baudrillard (2023)

“Like Tears in Rain”: The Crypt, the Haunted House, of Animation and Memory in the Era of Hyperreality’ (2020)

The Expanding Universe of Animation (Studies) (2016)

“Computer Says No”, or: The Erasure of the Human (2015)

The Spectre in the Screen (2008)

Speculations on the Animatic Automaton (2007)

“OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR”: The Virtual Reality of Jurassic Park and Jean Baudrillard (2005)

Who Framed Roger Rabbit, or The Framing of Animation (1991)

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