Panel Statement

Panel: Data Disinformation

Susan Sloan has re­searched ex­ten­sively the use of mo­tion cap­ture in an­i­ma­tion as­so­ci­ated with gam­ing and spe­cial ef­fects. In this paper she will focus on the post pro­duc­tion ‘clean­ing’ process eras­ing glitches in move­ment com­par­ing her aim to show sig­na­ture ges­ture and char­ac­ter in her sub­jects in con­trast to the styl­ized move­ment as­so­ci­ated with in­dus­try tech­nigques. Susan Sloan is able to de­velop the lan­guage of por­trai­ture and like­ness through image and move­ment.  Anal­o­gous to tra­di­tional no­tions of por­trai­ture, drawn or painted, at the core of these an­i­ma­tions is a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the sit­ter.  She will ex­plore these por­traits which are pro­duced within the con­text of paint­ing, an­i­ma­tion, video and sculp­ture.  They draw from all of these prac­tices and whilst en­tirely con­structed in 3D soft­ware the mo­tion of the sub­ject is recorded from real life. The works be­come a record and an in­ter­pre­ta­tion at the same time. The re­la­tion­ship be­tween the recorded data and man­u­ally an­i­mated and sculpted forms be­comes sig­nif­i­cant. The por­traits are not just an in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the ex­ter­nal vis­i­ble char­ac­ter­is­tics of the sit­ter but also a doc­u­ment of their ex­is­tence.

• Susan Sloan is a Lecturer/ Research Fellow at the National Centre for Computer Animation, Bournemouth University, UK. She works both collaboratively and alone using animation to create artworks and public projects. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally at exhibitions including the SIGGRAPH Gallery, San Diego; 404 Festival, Argentina; IVO3 London; IVO6, London, Sydney; Kunstihoone Gallery, Tallinn,  Estonia; Yokohama Art Museum, Japan; An Tuireann, Isle of Skye, Glasgow International Festival; NPAR, Annecy Animation Festival, France. She has undertaken a number of residencies including District of Columbia Schools, Washington DC; Royal Scottish Academy, Florence and The National Centre for Computer Animation, Bournemouth University .

 Full text (PDF) p. 2271-2273