In this reflection on the animation that happened, we explore how environments like VRChat challenge the limits of traditional documentary. Through the concept of operational image, we analyze new forms of testimony, emerging pedagogies, and animated practices that no longer represent, but produce real experiences.
When there's no camera, but there's testimony. The case of VRChat
You don't have to wait long. In the first minute of the documentary video People In VRChat Share Their Darkest Moment In Life (hosted on YouTube), a user of the social platform VRChat begins to recount his grandmother's death. He does so with touching honesty...
What happens only exists within the animate environment, and can only be experienced and transmitted through it.
This type of testimony questions the very foundations of traditional documentary, which since Barthes and Dubois has relied on photography as a trace of reality.
It is in this framework that I propose the term animation that happened: a way of understanding animation not as a means of representation, but as an environment in which events take place.
Although the case of VRChat It is particularly eloquent that this is not an isolated phenomenon.
From affective spaces to educational or clinical contexts, the animated no longer merely represents symptoms, but provokes and regulates them. In this context, it is also worth asking how the relationship between artificial intelligence and art, and how these technologies expand the expressive field of animation.
The operational image and the documentary
Harun Farocki detected this transformation early on with his concept of operational image: images generated not to be viewed, but to fulfill a function within a technical system.
In works like Eye/Machine (2001), Farocki shows how certain images do not document the world, but rather process it, measure it and govern it.
These images are born from a series of calculations, not from a lens. They are not intended to observe, but to execute. This visual logic finds echoes in the avant-garde movements of the 20th century, such as the The Absolute Film.
Works like those of Oskar Fischinger anticipate a functional aesthetic that connects with contemporary interfaces.
In this sense, the animation that happened It doesn't expand the documentary, but it does technically shift it. It questions its validity from a practice where there is no longer a lens, but rather an event.
Emerging pedagogies in animation
Thinking about animation as an event forces us to rethink how we teach it. It's no longer enough to master mimesis techniques. Teaching animation today involves creating frameworks where something can be News with its own meaning.
Instead of focusing solely on graphic or narrative tools, we must prepare to inhabit a regime in which animation is a sensitive infrastructure of social action. Here, the 3D animator He stops being a mere technician and becomes a designer of emerging experiences and realities.
Enrique Miguélez, teacher of Visual Culture and Visual Studies, within the Master's Degree in Visual Animation Creation.
Highlighted
1. Barthes, R. (1980). La Chambre Claire: Note Sur la Photographie. Gallimard.
2. Dubois, P. (1983). The Photographic Act and other essays. Gustavo Gili.
3. Farocki, H. (director). (2001). Eye/Machine [Film]. Harun Farocki Filmproduktion.
4. Fischinger, O. (director). (1926–1927). R1. Ein Formspiel [Animated Short Film].
UFA Studios.
5. Richter, H. (director). (1921–1923). Rhythmus 21 [Animated short film]. UFA
Studios.
6. Ruttmann, W. (director). (1921). Lichtspiel Opus 1 [Animated Short Film]. UFA
Studios.
7. VRChat Inc. (n.d.). VRChat [Virtual Reality Platform]. https://hello.vrchat.com/
8. VRChat Moments. (2023, March 20). People In VRChat Share Their Darkest
Moment In Life / VRCHAT STORIES [Video].
YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IVftoNMkxg. (accessed on
20 / 05 / 2025).
