Nea Ehrlich

Animated documentaries may seem artificial, fictional or even oxymoronic because they supposedly sever the connection to »the real« in a dual manner – by eliminating an indexical link to the physical referent portrayed and also by using visual styles that do not attempt photorealism, thus distancing the image from the physical referent all the more. By nonetheless claiming documentary status animated non-fiction raises important questions about contemporary conceptualizations of reality, realism and what contributes to the credibility of images. Perhaps today, in the 21^st century culture where animation plays an increasingly central role, animation's relation to ontological truth is different, thus changing its status and reception as a viable documentary language?

By focusing on machinima, animation used in interactive real-time virtual worlds, my presentation seeks to redefine animation as an innovative and truly contemporary visual language necessary for documentation. Real-time animation creates an ontologically indexical link by acting as a trace of the body whilst visually obliterating it simultaneously. So what do animated images really show?

Drawing from the fields of art, film, ludology and media studies I engage with contemporary reality as a mixed reality that combines the virtual with the physical, each epitomizing different forms of presence. Based on (analogue) photographic logic about the evidentiary status of images that is achieved through an existential link to corporeality, I claim that current techniques of animation require a reconsideration of animation's referential, ontological and epistemological status, consequently widening the accepted aesthetics of non-fiction today.

Nea Ehrlich completed her PhD in the Department of Art History at the University of Edinburgh in 2014. Her PhD thesis on contemporary animated documentaries linked new media aesthetics with the documentary turn. Her work lies at the intersection of Art History, Film Studies, Animation, Digital Media Theory, Gaming and Epistemology, tracing media transformations and their relation to visual culture's potential for producing credible truth claims.

Nea co-organized the 2011 »Animated Realities« conference at the University of Edinburgh in collaboration with the Edinburgh International Film Festival, has published articles in edited volumes and journals and is co-editor of »Drawn from Life«, the forthcoming 2016 anthology about animated documentaries published by Edinburgh University Press. She has taught at Tel Aviv University and Ben Gurion University in Israel and is currently a Polonsky postdoctoral fellow at The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute.