[ISEA2011] Panel: Chris Row­land (moderator) – Serious Animation: Beyond Art and Entertainment

Panel Statement

Chair Per­son: Chris Row­land
Pre­sen­ters: John An­der­son, Car­o­line Wilkin­son, Paul Good­fel­low & John McGhee

An­i­ma­tion meth­ods and tech­niques have evolved in re­cent years to be ac­cess­able to a wider range of cre­ative prac­ti­tion­ers than their orig­i­nal de­sign. Cre­ative prac­tice and re­search have taken meth­ods de­vel­oped for sto­ry­telling and en­ter­tain­ment and re­tasked them to solve real world prob­lems. An­i­ma­tion method­olo­gies are adapted to sup­port in­ves­ti­ga­tions into prod­uct vi­su­al­i­sa­tion, ar­chae­o­log­i­cal re­con­struc­tion, ar­chi­tec­tural vi­su­al­i­sa­tion, med­ical vi­su­al­i­sa­tion and many other spe­cialisms. Not re­stricted to vi­su­al­is­ing final de­sign so­lu­tions prior to pro­duc­tion, con­struc­tion and re­pro­duc­tion, but as an in­her­ent part of the de­sign and in­ves­ti­ga­tion process. This panel will ex­plore how a range of cre­ative prac­ti­tion­ers have adopted and adapted an­i­ma­tion to fur­ther their en­quiry. Using case stud­ies to ex­plore their aims and meth­ods, the pan­elists jour­neys will be de­scribed to il­lu­mi­nate their mo­ti­va­tions and in­ter­dis­ci­pli­nary ap­proaches. Pre­sen­ters are drawn from the 3D Vi­su­al­i­sa­tion Re­search Lab at Dun­can of Jor­dan­stone Col­lege of Art & De­sign, The cen­tre for Human Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion at Uni­ver­sity of Dundee, Grid­loop and Northum­bria Uni­ver­sity.

  • Dr. Chris Row­land is Head of An­i­ma­tion at DJCAD (Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design (DJCAD), University of Dundee in Dundee, Scotland) and leads the 3D Vi­su­al­i­sa­tion Re­search Lab. His re­search in­ter­ests are cen­tred around ex­ploit­ing an­i­matin method­ol­ogy to in­ves­ti­gate real world prob­lems. His col­lab­o­ra­tive pro­jects in­clude the vi­su­al­i­sa­tion of his­toric and en­vi­ron­men­tally sig­nif­i­cant ship­wrecks on the seabed from multi­beam sonar data . Pro­jects have in­cluded the vi­su­al­i­sa­tion of sunken Russ­ian Nu­clear sub­marines in the Arc­tic Cir­cle. Re­cently vi­su­al­is­ing the Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon oil rig, which lies a mile be­neath the sea in the Gulf of Mex­ico after caus­ing the biggest oil spill in US his­tory in April 2010.