Characters are visiotypes which build immediate emotional ties to their viewers: they look back - in what is at once a promise and a threat of negated distance. The focus of the panel discussion is the desire awakened by these figures and the often ambivalent emotions they aim to provoke - whether these figures take the form of reduced icons, in a play with the aesthetics of cuteness or grotesquerie, in art pieces or as robots. What perceptual patterns are triggered when we set eyes on them for the first time? What basic aesthetical schemata do these characters employ, and to what end?
CINDY LISICA
(London, UK)
(London, UK)
Survival of the Cutest:
The Rise of the Superflat
Cindy Lisica, MA, is a PhD candidate at the University of the Arts London Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation, UK. Her current research investigates Superflat art and theory as a model for cross-cultural exchange via artists Chiho Aoshima, Takashi Murakami and Aya Takano. She works at Tate (London) and has held positions at The Warhol Museum (Pittsburgh) and MOCA (Los Angeles).
Takashi Murakami
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CHRISTOPH BARTNECK
(Eindhoven, NL)
(Eindhoven, NL)
Too real is unreal
Dr. Christoph Bartneck is an assistant professor in the Department of Industrial Design at the Eindhoven University of Technology, NL. He has a background in Industrial Design and Human-Computer Interaction, and his projects and studies have been published in journals, newspapers, and conferences. He is an associate editor of the International Journal of Social Robotics.
Asimo / Honda
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STEFANIE DIEKMANN / MICHAEL LIEBE
(Potsdam, DE)
(Potsdam, DE)
Little Black Dots:
How Far Down Can You Go?
Diekmann is visiting Professor in Media Studies, University of Applied Sciences, Potsdam and in Theater Studies, Freie Universität, Berlin. Fields of interest: intermediality; comics; media theory. Recent publications on the conceptualization of the ‘backstage’, photography in documentary film, and antitheatricality in media theory.
Liebe is research assistant at the Department for Arts and Media and founding member of the Digital Games Research Center, both located at the University of Potsdam. Founder of A MAZE, a Berlin based festival format celebrating the convergence of computer games and art. Member of the DFG-project, Mediality of Computer Games, focusing on possibilities of interaction and expression in and with computer games.
Liebe is research assistant at the Department for Arts and Media and founding member of the Digital Games Research Center, both located at the University of Potsdam. Founder of A MAZE, a Berlin based festival format celebrating the convergence of computer games and art. Member of the DFG-project, Mediality of Computer Games, focusing on possibilities of interaction and expression in and with computer games.
Genevieve Gaukler.
Characters have a presence that seems to work independently of narrative and refuses clear contextualisation. Which is why characters function equally well as brand logos in the field of global marketing strategies, as pop-cultural obsessions and as protagonists of subversive interventions in the system which created them. The panel will examine a wide spectrum of production and reception sites for these figures, asking how their lives in the new media look like and how they are marketed as objects of desire, and looking at the conditions of their existence in the global flow of images.
GEOFFREY LONG
(Cambridge, USA)
(Cambridge, USA)
From Plot to Character to World:
Some Aesthetics of Transmedia Storytelling
Geoffrey Long is a researcher and the communications director for the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA, where he completed his Master’s thesis on transmedia storytelling under Henry Jenkins. He is an alumni researcher in the Convergence Culture Consortium and serves on the editorial boards for the Journal of Transformative Works & Cultures and the game studies journal Eludamos.
Super Mario / Nintendo
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KEN BELSON
(New York, USA)
(New York, USA)
Hello Kitty:
How a Two-Dimensional Cat became
Japan’s Answer to Mickey Mouse
Ken Belson is co-author of “Hello Kitty: The Remarkable Story of Sanrio and the Billion Dollar Feline Phenomenon”, the only book in English about Japan’s most famous cat. He wrote the book while working for the New York Times in Tokyo, where over 12 years, he also wrote for Business Week, Reuters and Bloomberg.
Since returning to New York in 2004, he has covered the wireless and energy industries. He visits Japan annually.
Since returning to New York in 2004, he has covered the wireless and energy industries. He visits Japan annually.
Hello Kitty / Sanrio
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FRENCHY LUNNING
(Minneapolis, USA)
(Minneapolis, USA)
Under the Ruffles:
From Shojo Character to Shojo Culture
Frenchy Lunning is a Professor of Liberal Arts at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, USA. She is Editor-in-Chief of Mechademia, an academic journal on Japanese popular culture, and co-directs the College’s annual workshop “SGMS: Schoolgirls and Mobilesuits: Culture and Creation in Manga and Anime”. She has written for several journals and is currently working on three books, curating a museum exhibit on Tezuka Osamu, and producing a feature-length animation.
Chiho Aoshima
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In their reduced figuration the formal language of these characters often draws on a wide range of folk and pop cultures. The play with mask, costume and fetish begins when the figures leave two dimensionality, when image incarnate meets human being or when man and character become one. The panel will examine the different strategies of interacting with and embodying characters - interpreting these interactions with theories of performance and ritual to pinpoint the positions and functions which these characters proclaim as their own.
MARIO BÜHRMANN
(Berlin, DE)
(Berlin, DE)
Embodied Characters:
Rituals and Masquerades
Mario Bührmann, Dr. phil.; member of the Collaborative Research Centre “Cultures of Performativity” at the Freie Universität Berlin; research interests: theories of performativity, ritual and play; last publication: “Sind Rituale das konservative Element einer Kultur? Zum Verhältnis von Ritualen und Kultur(en) bei Franz Boas”, in: H.-W. Schmuhl (Hg.): Kulturrelativismus und Antirassismus. Der Anthropologe Franz Boas (1858-1942), Bielefeld 2009.
Ritual mask from Bali
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VERENA KUNI
(Frankfurt am Main, DE)
(Frankfurt am Main, DE)
Get A Life? Get Alive!
I Walked With A Character
Verena Kuni is professor for Visual Culture at Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main, DE. Her research, teaching, lectures, projects and publications are devoted to contemporary arts and media cultures, their histories and futures. Current projects focus on D.I.Y. and prosumer cultures; media of imagination – imagination of media; technologies of transformation; philosophical toys; transfers between media and material cultures; and digital decay.
Coseplay convention
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RAGNHILD TRONSTAD
(Oslo, NO)
(Oslo, NO)
Performing a Character Identity
Ragnhild Tronstad is a researcher at the Department of Media and Communication, University of Oslo. She wrote her doctoral thesis (2004) on questing and character performance in the text based multi-user game Tubmud, and has published on various subjects within games- and performance studies. In her current research project, “Play, Performativity, and Presence” (financed by The Research Council of Norway) she studies the aesthetics of play in games and new media art.
Second Life
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