Manovich, The Language of New Media

The Language of New Media
IV. The Illusions

Summary

This chapter opens with a short story about an ancient Greek painter called Zeuxis who lived in the 5th century BC. it’s a story about his competition with another painter called Parrhasius. Before he begins he then tells the reader that this story is an early example of the struggle for illusionism. The chapter opens with this because he references it quite a lot during the first half. Afterwards the story of Zeuxis is compared to a modern day piece of technology called RealityEngine. This comparison shows us that compared to these stories of early illusionism RealityEngine may not be as detailed or as good as Zeuxis but it has a few things that Zeuxis didn’t have in 5 BC, such as a user being able to interact with an object.

During the bulk of the first half he gives a swift scan of illusionism, its history and its applications in past and modern day media. He covers such subject as, the fact that previous illusionist things photography, film and video are being replaced by digital computers and how this is one of the biggest driving forces for the new media’s expansion but how the new media is also obsessed with visual technology. He then moves on to tell the reader about the animators quest to produce photo-realistic images of sets and people and that the quest to simulate the perfect reality is the driving force for VR (Virtual Reality.) Other subjects are then covered for the argument, for instance he shows that the medias obsession for illusionism isn’t to sole driving force for the new media but it is one of the key factors, he then goes on to ask How is the “reality effect” of a synthetic image different from that of the optical media? Is computer technology redefines our standards of illusionism as determined by our earlier experience with photography, film and video? The first half is finished by answering these questions.

The last half of this chapter is filled with three topics that illusionism in the new media may raise. The first shows us that there is a parallel between representational and photorealistic computer imagery, and gives a brief look at the growth of this technology in the media and is always reflected back at artists through these ages. The second section discusses feats in visual computer technology such as blur and colour range and how these may be impossible to tell apart from real colours and blurs in photos with the naked eye, they are created differently using pixels and mathematical equations and algorithms. This section ends by asking will cinematography be replaced by other more superior forms of imagery of which Manovich answers no because cinematography has distinctive characteristics. The third and final section is summarising 3 common features in arguments about theory’s and history relating to illusionism he breaks them down into:

1. Illusionistic images share some features with the represented physical reality (for instance, the number of an object’s angles).

2. Illusionistic images share some features with human vision (for instance, linear perspective).

3. Each period offers some new “features” which are perceived by audiences as “improvement” over of the previous period (for instance, the evolution of cinema from silent to sound to colour).

Manovich also discusses that computer media changes these because our demands have changed and become more complicated since then. This section finishes with a look at interfacing and the extensive research gone into trying to get movement in a computer generated reality to simulate to movement of real objects in real life, such as how a glass smashes on the floor of how a car moves when it hit’s a wall, what it takes to make a realistic creation of a human being and what factors play a part in user’s assessment of the reality effect of the image.