Editorial

The initial proposal for animation: an interdisciplinary journal submitted to SAGE Publications in 2005 was in part oriented to the impact the manifold expressions of animation have had and will have, not just on visual entertainment but also in concrete relation to our daily lives. In the 12 years and 36 issues that have been published since then, our authors, many of whom were or are postgraduate and early career researchers, have made significant contributions to our core editorial aim. This is to address and include all animation made using all known (and perhaps yet to be revealed) techniques since the 16th century up to the digital shift and beyond, revealing its implications for other forms of time-based media expression past, present and future, and to engender debate and illuminate how animation affects our lives.

The journal’s philosophical remit was and is also informed by the notion of ‘Pervasive Animation’ that is concerned with the effects and affects of animation in contemporary culture on the humans who engage with it, and with informing relations and distinctions between a range of styles, subjects, techniques and platforms on which it is experienced. The latter of these two words – animation – is subject to a wide range of formal and conceptual understandings and usages: a technique of filmmaking, a film form, a genre, an all-embracing term for the millions of films it can apply to. Any discussion of ‘animation’ and any theory attempting to provide a single framework for it is fraught with the problematics of a top-down, often essentialist or medium-specific approach that cannot hold for the extreme diversity of film styles, techniques, experiences and genres of animated film. As a descriptive attribute, the adjective ‘pervasive’ specifically qualifies a noun – in this case, animation – as spreading widely throughout an area or group of people, with a particular or unwelcome influence or physical effect. I use this term as it is distinct from the adjective ‘ubiquitous’ that means widespread or omnipresent. ‘Pervasive’ specifies an element of extensive penetration and, in some cases, insidiousness, and this has a semantic function that adds a specific meaning to the noun ‘animation’. The paradigm ‘pervasive animation’ thus denotes specific, aggressive, active, affective qualities of some works made using this moving image technique. A number of our authors have examined the political ramifications of animation and, in 2016, Erich Herhuth guest edited a Special Issue on ‘Animation and Politics’. In this issue, he posed the question ‘How can political enquiry guide the study of animation?’ (Herhuth, 2016: 4) and provided a framework for the articles that explored ‘the nexus of animation and politics in at least two directions: the politics of animation and the animation of politics’ (p. 5).

We are pleased that the current Special Issue, guest edited by Joel McKim and Esther Leslie, further expands the debates on politics and animation with the theme ‘Life Remade: Critical Animation in the Digital Age’. Their introductory article contextualizes their editorial concept and describes a framework in which their authors take issue with politically relevant cultural, social, consumerist and artistic implications of mostly digital animation, data visualization and the software and hardware used to create them. When this journal first began, we were observing the steady increase of animation in visual culture and the increasing use of digital tools in its creation: it was estimated that the global animation and special effects industry would grow from US$25bn to US$70bn by 2005. In 2017, Transparency Market Research released a report, ‘Computer Graphics Market – Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2014–2020’, with estimates that the global computer graphics market is projected to rise from US$130.91 billion in 2015 at a steady 5.5 percent compound annual growth rate to become worth US$211.60 billion by 2024. ¹ This market report included some of the prominent corporations at the forefront of production, application, distribution and software creation: Microsoft Corporation, Intel Corporation, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Inc, ARM Ltd, Adobe Systems Ltd, Imagination Technologies Limited, Sony Corporation, Nvidia Corporation, Siemens PLM Software, Autodesk Inc and Dassault Systèmes SA. ² Most of these are also major players or influencers, or they provide technological foundations for visual communication technologies and data harvesting that utilize animation in their visualizations, from the military, design or architecture to mainstream entertainment, advertising and more. Many of these areas demand political, social and ethical responsibility, and you will see how this Special Issue engages with these areas, both broadly and specifically.