A few weeks ago I presented my most recent paper, “Mark the unexpected”, at the October MOSAIC meeting 2024 (https://cscan.gla.ac.uk/mosaic/).
Preprint is available here and the outreach summary of the talk below.
Super quick summary: Understanding the difference between what is animate (alive or sentient) as opposed to inanimate (not alive nor sentient) is essential for humans, both for our ancestors and for us today. We know that animates are expected to move toward a goal because of their sentience, just like you move intentionally toward a train station every morning. Inanimates, on the other hand, are more associated with aimless movement because they lack intentionality. In my research, I show that when inanimate objects are moving toward a goal in a comic, they need to be marked by motion lines indicating movement more often than animates. This is because the motion lines unambiguously tell us that inanimates are moving in an goal-directed way, which is unexpected from them.