The Form and Content of ‘Digital Spatiality’: Mapping the Soft Power of DreamWorks Animation in Asia
In: Asiascape: Digital AsiaSearch for other papers by Natalia Grincheva in
Current site
Google Scholar
Abstract
The article explores a series of blockbuster exhibitions of DreamWorks Animation developed by the Australian Centre of the Moving Image (ACMI) in collaboration with one of the largest Hollywood producers. Curated by ACMI, this blockbuster exhibition was designed to provide a behind-the-scenes look into collaborative processes involved in DreamWorks animations. This exhibition travelled across the Asia-Pacific in 2015-2017 and was hosted by a number of museums, such as the ArtScience Museum in Singapore, the Te Papa Museum in New Zealand, the Seoul Museum of Art in South Korea, and the National Taiwan Science and Education Centre in Taiwan. It displayed over 400 unique objects from the studio’s archive ‘of rare and never before displayed material’, such as drawings, models, maps, photographs, posters, and other artworks. The article explores the highly favourable reception to the DreamWorks Animation blockbuster in different cities in Asia. It employs a geo-visualization of Asian engagement with the blockbuster exhibit to reveal and explain local and global mechanisms of ‘attraction’ power, generated by DreamWorks in different Asian countries. Contributing to the special issue, this article engages with two aspects of it: the form, cultural digital mapping; and the content, the nature of media pop culture exemplified through the traveling blockbuster.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
-
Art Daily (2014), ‘DreamWorks Animation: The Exhibition Opens at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image’. Retrieved 9 August 2018 from https://bit.ly/2M3l4GF/.
-
Arts Review (2014), ‘DreamWorks Animation: The Exhibition’. Retrieved 9 August 2018 from https://bit.ly/2M8ucJz/.
-
Arts Review (2015), ‘DreamWorks Animation’. Retrieved 9 August 2018 from https://bit.ly/2M8ucJz/.
-
ArtScience Museum (2015), ‘Two Decades of DreamWorks Animation Come to Life at ArtScience Museum’. Press Release. Retrieved 9 August 2018 from https://bit.ly/2MvCYy8/.
-
ArtScience Museum (2018), ‘About the Museum’. Retrieved 9 August 2018 from https://bit.ly/2npczH6/.
-
Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) (2004), Annual Report 2003-2004. Retrieved 9 August 2018 from https://bit.ly/2M9TsPs/.
-
Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) (2006), Annual Report 2005-2006. Retrieved 9 August 2018 from https://bit.ly/2M9TsPs/.
-
Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) (2015), ‘About DreamWorks Animation’. Retrieved 9 August 2018 from https://bit.ly/2nlp8Dk/.
-
Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) (2016), Annual Report 2015-2016. Retrieved 9 August 2018 from http://bit.ly/2vEEfNN/.
-
Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) (2017), Annual Report 2016-2017. Retrieved 9 August 2018 from https://bit.ly/2M9TsPs/.
-
Australian Government (2012), ‘Australia in the Asian Century’. White Paper. Retrieved 9 August 2018 from https://bit.ly/1TYafk0/.
-
Berger, Matthias (2014), ‘Augmenting science through art’. Journal of Professional Communication, 3(2), 29-32.
-
Boast, Robin (2011), ‘Neocolonial Collaboration: Museum as Contact Zone Revisited’. Museum Anthropology, 34(1), 56-70.
-
Bodenhamer, David, Corrigan, John & Harris, Trevor (Eds.) (2015), Deep Maps and Spatial Narratives. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
-
Box Office Mojo (2018), ‘DreamWorks Animation: Total Grosses’. Retrieved 9 August 2018 from https://bit.ly/2Mcmuhy/.
-
Castells, Manuel (2004), The Rise of the Network Society. Oxford: Blackwell.
-
Castells, Manuel (2010), ‘Communication Power’. In: James Curran (Ed.), Media and Society. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 8-25.
-
Chitty, Naren, Ji, Li & Rawnsley, Garry (Eds.) (2017), Routledge Handbook of Soft Power. London: Routledge.
-
Conn, Steven (2010), Do Museums Still Need Objects? Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
-
Crane, Diana (2014), ‘Cultural Globalization and the Dominance of the American Film Industry: Cultural Policies, National Film Industries, and Transnational Film’. International Journal of Cultural Policy, 20(4), 365-382.
-
Duxbury, Nancy, Garrett-Petts, W.F. & MacLennan, David (2015), Cultural Mapping as Cultural Inquiry: Routledge Advances in Research Methods. London: Routledge.
-
Evan, Graeme & Foord, Jo (2008), ‘Cultural Mapping and Sustainable Communities: Planning for the Arts Revisited’. Cultural Trends, 17(2), 65-96.
-
Fan, Ying (2008), ‘Soft Power: Power of Attraction or Confusion?’ Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, 4(2), 147-158.
-
Feldstein, Martin (2009), The Economics of Art Museums. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
-
Fitzpatrick, Kathy (2010), The Future of U.S. Public Diplomacy: An Uncertain Fate. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff.
-
Forgan, Sophy (2005), ‘Building the Museum: Knowledge, Conflict, and the Power of Place’. Isis, 96(4), 572-585.
-
Frey, Bruno (1998), ‘Superstar Museums: An Economic Analysis’. Journal of Cultural Economics, 22(1), 113-125.
-
Giaccardi, Elisa (2012), Heritage and Social Media: Understanding Heritage in a Participatory Culture. London: Routledge.
-
Grincheva, Natalia (2015), ‘The World Beach Project Going Viral: Measuring Online Influence (Case Study of the Victoria & Albert Online Museum Project)’. Journal of Creative Communications, 10(1), 39-55.
-
Grincheva, Natalia (2018), ‘Mapping Museum “Soft Power”: Adding Geo-visualization to the Methodological Framework’. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities. 33(4): pp. 1-22.
-
Iwabuchi, Koichi (2002), ‘From Western gaze to global gaze: Japanese cultural presence in Asia’. In: Diana Crane (Ed.), Global Culture: Media, Arts, Policy and Globalization. New York: Routledge, pp. 256-273.
-
Jacobsen, John (2016), Measuring Museum Impact and Performance. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
-
Lee, David & Gilmore, Abigail (2012), ‘Mapping Cultural Assets and Evaluating Significance: Theory, Methodology and Practice’. Cultural Trends, 21(1), 3-28.
-
Lee, Francis (2008), ‘Hollywood Movies in East Asia: Examining Cultural Discount and Performance Predictability at the Box Office’. Asian Journal of Communication, 18(2), 117-136.
-
Lord, Gail Dexter & Blankenberg, Ngaire (2015), Museums, Cities and Soft Power. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield/AAM Press.
-
Luger, Jason (2017), ‘But I’m Just an Artist!? Intersections, Identity, Meaning, and Context’. Antipode, 49(5), 1329-1348.
-
Macdonald, Sharon (2011), A Companion to Museum Studies. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
-
Manheim, Jarol (1994), Strategic Public Diplomacy and American Foreign Policy: The Evolution of Influence. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
-
Melissen, Jan (Ed.) (2005), The New Public Diplomacy: Soft Power in International Relations. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
-
Newell, Jenny (2012), ‘Old Objects, New Media: Historical Collections, Digitization and Affect’. Journal of Material Culture, 17, 287-302.
-
Norris, Linda & Tisdale, Rainey (2016), Creativity in Museum Practice. London: Routledge.
-
Nye, Joseph (2004), Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics. New York: Public Affairs.
-
Pamment, James (2014), ‘Articulating Influence: Toward a Research Agenda for Interpreting the Evaluation of Soft Power, Public Diplomacy and Nation Brands’. Public Relations Review, 40, 50-59.
-
Pang, Laikwan (2005), ‘Copying Kill Bill’. Social Text, 23(2), 133-153. https://doi.org/10.1215/01642472-23-2_83-133.
-
Runnel, Pille & Pille Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt (2014), Democratising the Museum: Reflections on Participatory Technologies. Frankfurt: PL Academic Research.
-
Snow, Nancy & Taylor, Phillip (2009), Routledge Handbook of Public Diplomacy. New York: Routledge.
-
Stalder, Felix (2005), Manuel Castells: Key Contemporary Thinkers. Cambridge: Polity.
-
Sylvester, Christin (2009), Art/Museums: International Relations Where We Least Expect It. London: Paradigm.
-
Tan, Kenneth (2012), ‘The Ideology of Pragmatism in Singapore: Neoliberal Globalization and Political Authoritarianism’. Journal of Contemporary Asia, 42(1), 67-92.
-
Tang, Jun (2014), ‘Translating Kung Fu Panda’s Kung Fu-Related Elements: Cultural Representation in Dubbing and Subtitling’. Perspectives, 22(3), 437-456.
-
Travel.Snap.Stories Blog. (2015), ‘Singapore Event: ArtScience DreamWorks Animation’. Retrieved 9 August 2018 from https://bit.ly/2vxegXF/.
-
Vergo, Peter (1997), The New Museology. London: Reaction Books.
-
Zhen, Zhen (2015), ‘Two Decades of DreamWorks Animation Come to Life at ArtScience Museum’. Kavenyou. Retrieved 9 August 2018 from https://bit.ly/2vSf2Oj/.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 1001 | 206 | 26 |
| Full Text Views | 146 | 65 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 100 | 22 | 1 |
The Form and Content of ‘Digital Spatiality’: Mapping the Soft Power of DreamWorks Animation in Asia
In: Asiascape: Digital AsiaSearch for other papers by Natalia Grincheva in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Abstract
The article explores a series of blockbuster exhibitions of DreamWorks Animation developed by the Australian Centre of the Moving Image (ACMI) in collaboration with one of the largest Hollywood producers. Curated by ACMI, this blockbuster exhibition was designed to provide a behind-the-scenes look into collaborative processes involved in DreamWorks animations. This exhibition travelled across the Asia-Pacific in 2015-2017 and was hosted by a number of museums, such as the ArtScience Museum in Singapore, the Te Papa Museum in New Zealand, the Seoul Museum of Art in South Korea, and the National Taiwan Science and Education Centre in Taiwan. It displayed over 400 unique objects from the studio’s archive ‘of rare and never before displayed material’, such as drawings, models, maps, photographs, posters, and other artworks. The article explores the highly favourable reception to the DreamWorks Animation blockbuster in different cities in Asia. It employs a geo-visualization of Asian engagement with the blockbuster exhibit to reveal and explain local and global mechanisms of ‘attraction’ power, generated by DreamWorks in different Asian countries. Contributing to the special issue, this article engages with two aspects of it: the form, cultural digital mapping; and the content, the nature of media pop culture exemplified through the traveling blockbuster.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 1001 | 206 | 26 |
| Full Text Views | 146 | 65 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 100 | 22 | 1 |