Doubling the duality: a theoretical and practical investigation into materiality and embodiment of meaning in the integration of live action and animation

This practice-led Ph.D. is comprised of a body of work (hybrid films) and its contextual analysis. Together they constitute a method that aims to understand and re-interpret the dialogical relationship between live action and animation filmmaking. The research argues that from its beginning the art of moving images has presented a struggle between opposed tendencies such as imprint and construction , machine eye and artist s hand , dissection of time and condensation of time that are found between the unstable duality of live action and animation. While mainstream cinema has focused most of its efforts on taming the collisions that occur within the integration of live action and animation, it has also relied on the interface s instability to animate its being. As the interface becomes more invisible in the digital age, this research reconsiders the interaction between live action and animation in moving-image production and the construction of meaning in filmmaking as it incorporates the digital into its languages. In contextualising the double and fluctuating nature of co-presence in live action and animation, my question is How could the integration of the opposing attributes of live action and animation interrupt perceptual realism and produce a sense of estrangement in a meaningful way? Firstly this involves identifying the constantly mobile tension between live action and animation. Secondly integration is informed by ideas of estrangement and derealisation , and methods of interrupting perceptual coherence within the screened world to reveal insights into the world of social relations. Two underlying themes are addressed: (1) the uncanniness of co-presence, and (2) the expression of subjectivity through this co-presence. Interrogating the constructedness of the hybridised figure as it appears on screen by exposing its inherent conflicts, and exploring the aesthetics of estrangement and the expression of subjectivity in hybrid films led to an inquiry about cinematic time and movement. This revealed another dimension to the difference and interrelationship between live action and animation. Being both the source and outcome of these themes as expressed in the written thesis, the practical component of this project consists of three hybrid films: Nothing to Do with Weather (3 50 ), Animating Animator the Animated (2 47 ), and Flying Tunes (8 27 ). Theoretical findings are identified through the analysis of works by other artists and discussion of their concepts, and my own practice contributes to knowledge by inspiring, assessing and demonstrating my ideas on hybridity. My three practices are, to some extent, an allegory about the alienation a Far-East Asian filmmaker may feel in a world seemingly dominated by Western paradigms. The films chart my Far-Eastern Asian independent filmmaker s research as a journey towards an adaptation of the aesthetics and methods of contemporary filmmaking originating in Western culture and philosophy. As a piece of research, the transformation of the researcher through practice may be considered of significance in the formation of theory.