Tinker too - An independent design studio in Singapore

Nov10

By Jean-Marc Gauthier. Design - Experience Design - Client

Any thoughts about the interconnection between storytelling and technological innovation? I am focusing on films and animations that had an impact on the audience and shaped our natural attraction to playfulness and complexity in our everyday life.

Part 1 Storytelling and Innovation.
“All we see are perceptions mistaken for reality.“ Alan Moore (V for Vendetta, Watchmen,The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen)

Following technological innovation in the film industry, over the course of the times, we see things emerging, interconnections between technological innovation and storytelling, creating patterns of change that repeat at different times of the history of film. Technological innovation can be worshipped and feared at the same time. Some film makers create environments where technology stimulates the senses and plays the role of a game changer for storytelling. Mark Cousin's Story of Film in 5 parts presents a couple of interviews of film makers on technological innovation and storytelling. They are surprisingly different on many levels.

The modernist:
Lana Wachowski (The Matrix Trilogy, Speed Racer, Cloud Atlas) is one of the most "modernist" filmmakers who views the loss of stories and of memories as a necessity in order to make space for the new.

"As the way that we loose things change, the way that we find the way to invent to find them changes. The things that are important to human beings - we figure out ways to save them - it has always been true. Yes we loose stuff but that's part of life."

The humanistic:

Steven Soderbergh says that "People love great stories to get to a world that they have not experienced before and how they get there it does not really matter. It comes down to one thing if you do something with your heart something you are convinced that you feel about, it does not matter what you are using."

Following the laws of the market:
Is this the only way that change works? Technological innovations often start with offering new choices that are untested, fragile and do not threaten the established ways to produce films. But soon the old choices are taken away and everyone is only left with the "new" solutions. Michael Chapman (Taxi Driver) says "if you become unable to deal with it then that's fine because it means that your time is finished. It is time for other people to take it on."

People with new ideas will naturally take the place of the old ones. Is this the only way that change works?

JM Gauthier@Tinker too

Jean-Marc is the Managing Director of Tinker too. An animator, architect, author, entrepreneur and teacher, Jean-Marc's work addresses animation, interactive design and virtual spaces.
He has collaborated on numerous scientific visualization projects, including an immersive display for the visualization of pedestrian crossings and street intersections funded by the National Health Institute (USA) and the University of Alabama (USA). His interactive media art works have been presented at venues internationally including the American Museum of the Moving Image (NYC), the Institute of Fine Arts (NYC), Chelsea Art Museum (NYC), File Festival (Brazil), Ars Electronica Festival (Austria), Villette-Biennale Numérique (Paris), Le Cube, MAMAC (France), Siggraph Asia (Singapore) and DaeGu (South Korea).
He was an associate Professor at New York University and the Founding Chair of Singapore’s Animation and Digital Arts MFA program at New York University Tisch School of the Arts Asia.
Architecte DPLG, Paris. Master of Professional Studies, ITP, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University
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