Jordan Gowanlock
Education:
PhD, Film and Moving Image Studies, Concordia University
Bio
Dr. Jordan Gowanlock’s work focuses on the interaction between technology and creative practice in the history of animation, special effects and games. He has a PhD in Film and Movie Image Studies from Concordia University and was a Visiting Researcher at University of California Berkeley, with support from the Fonds de Recherche sur la Société et la Culture. Jordan has published in the academic journals Animation, Technoculture and Navigationen and has published a monograph through Palgrave Macmillan titled Animated Unpredictable Effects.
Research Interests
Jordan’s book Animating Unpredictable Effects looks at forms of computer graphics that sit between the manual manipulation of animation and the automated capture of live action cinema. By focusing on automated tools, he reveals the shifting role technology development has been playing in media industry economics and labour over the past few decades. Jordan’s work offers a framework for understanding the contributions of technical workers in media production, anticipating recent conversations about AI and creativity.
Jordan is currently working on a project that involves analyzing public datasets from IMDB, the US Patent Office, and the University of Minnesota’s Movielens project to create visualizations about the changing role of engineering and R&D in media industries. He is also co-editing a volume of the Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Animation Studies on techniques, processes, and environments that bridge theory and practice.
