Animating interaction

Abstract

This article engages with Teri Silvio’s 2010 challenge to treat animation as a central trope for understanding the relationship between selves and media. We discuss how animation can illuminate aspects of interactions that performance, the current dominant trope, can not—such as addressing what it means to be human when what distinguishes the human from the nonhuman is how one is being controlled. We discuss how focusing on animation can shed light on social interactions both in virtual worlds and with media practices in which online and offline exchanges are inextricably intertwined.