FICTA SciO · Figuring the Invisible: Conventions and Tactics in Animation for Science Outreach

Figuring the Invisible: Conventions and Tactics in Animation for Science Outreach

FICTA SciO (Figuring the Invisible: Conventions and Tactics in Animation for Science Outreach) is a two-year research action proposal, planned as a Global Fellowship. The Researcher will spend the first 12 months (outgoing phase) at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (HSLU), Switzerland, while the Department of Cultural Heritage (dBC) of the University of Padova (Unipd), Italy, would be the host institution for the 12-month return phase. The CICAP, the Italian Committee for Sceptical Inquiry, will participate to the research by offering expertise from scientists and scientific journalists, and by contributing in setting up exploitation and dissemination initiatives and events, as well as in enhancing the communication through social media and press releases. FICTA SciO (which, in Latin, means “I know fictitious things”) addresses a major problem in contemporary science outreach: the animated visualisations of the “invisible” sides of reality, like black holes or atoms, are mostly offered to the audience “as they are”, without any warning that they are scientific models based on non-optical evidence. Because of this, they get misunderstood for true-to-nature representations, and as such they circulate also in audio-visual entertainment, reinforcing thewrong belief that those object would exactly look like that, if they were to be seen by the human eye. The research will catalogue and explain such animations of the “invisible” in an open-access online repository; it will also establish an international committee of journalists, experts in audio-visual communication and scientists to keep the research going even after its formal conclusion, to permanently promote a transparent understanding of the audio-visual conventions and communication tactics pertinent to animations in multimedia science outreach. The animations which will be researched pertain objects at macroscopic cosmological scales (black holes, quasars, neutron stars), or at atomic and sub-atomic scales (atoms, quarks, strings), or too far away in time (extinct life forms). As remarked by Silvye Bissonette in 2014, «one of the major problems associated with such animated models is the lack of instructions on how to interpret them and judge their accuracy»; in 2016, Vincent Campbell concurred that «of particular concern […] is the possibility of a lack of transparency for the audience of the shift from the evidentiary nature of the documentary image to a much more speculative and constructed image». The enhanced photorealism 2 and interactivity of contemporary animation has a key role in this; the research will thus focus on multimedia science outreach produced after 1980, when the technology of animation started to allow for this enhanced realism. The research will mainly approach the issue with the critical methodology of film and animation studies, and especially of the studies on animated documentaries, which have remained a major point in the agenda of animation scholars in the past fifteen years. However, the methodology will also 3 implement an interdisciplinary dialogue, with experts and consultants coming from a) the scientific areas referenced by the animations in the researched multimedia products; b) scientific communication and journalism; c) animation practice; d) data visualisation. The audio-visual products to be studied will include: a) documentary films for cinema, TV, home video and the Internet; b) science-based animated simulations featured in fiction films; c) user-edited scientific content for social media; d) interactive programs and applications. The action will result in two main outputs (milestones): 1) an online, open access repository, listing the titles and pertinent data of animated models of “invisible” objects featured in science outreach from 1980 to today, with accompanying texts providing guidance to their correct interpretation; 2) a permanent committee destined to continue the research, update the database and promote initiative and events for the transparency of multimedia scientific communication; this will be established in Padova in collaboration with the CICAP, the leading Italian institution for science-based scepticism.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз