It has taken me a day to figure out what MovieReshape means in the light of this week’s reading because it seems to embody the first two sections of “The Operations” (Selecting: Menus, Filters, and Plug-ins” and “Compositing/Montage” yet it goes beyond the concepts of illusioinistic images and immersive VR environments that Manovich addresses in chapter four. Because this new technology surpasses Manovich’s arc of technology, and because “[e]ach new technological development…points out to viewers just how “unrealistic” the previous image was” (186), we can get a better understanding of what Manovich means in this chapter and what belies the book as a whole by employing Comolli’s reading of “the history of realistic media as a constant trade-off of codes, a chain of substitutions producing the reality effect for audiences” (189).
Here again in chapter four Manovich propounds photorealistic VR as the apex of the current technological movement, but it seems to me that VR as we thought of it in 2001 has gone the way of flying cars and personal jet packs. I see a trend in technology that is veering from Manovich’s model of computer-generated realities (making the fake real) to making the real fake as seen in widely available smart phone apps and the MovieReshape video.
Instead of humans existing in a virtual world, in the case of augmented reality apps we are introducing a digital layer of reality over our own, which we can use in real time through the cameras on our telephones: we have digitally generating representations imposed in our movement and action in physical reality as opposed to our real actions effecting computer-generated objects in a virtual world. A similar layer can be experience through interaction with QR codes (see below). These are significant developments that expose the limitations and short-comings of Manovich’s prognostications of the path, capability, and usability of technology just ten years ago.
I greatly hope that there is a second edition of this book that considers the relevant and unforeseen advances in technology, some which support and others that bypass Manovich’s theories. Like new media itself, new concepts of new media expose the unrealistic aspects of the previous generation.
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ReplyDeleteSo I generated one of these things and tried to embed it in a post, but to no avail. Boo.
ReplyDeleteI did, however, download a barcode scanner app on my phone and scanned my generated barcode and it worked like a charm. Super cool!!
ReplyDeleteThe codes are quite fun - we only use them to scan products and find out if they're cheaper elsewhere, but there's obviously a LOT of additional potential.
ReplyDeleteTo back up to the first part of your post: Wow. I had no idea we're figured out "photshop for video" like this. Somehow, I find it creepier. Which interests me, because the text talks a bunch about people being unsettled by things that are TOO real, but this does seem to be different. I definitely prefer too real to fake reality like this. I guess this is because video ranks higher culturally on the "reality" scale in comparison to photos. And, we've had time to get used to photoshop, I suppose. Anyways, thanks for the icky feeling...
I thought your observation about the advancements that come with each new generation were insightful. When you said, "I greatly hope that there is a second edition of this book that considers the relevant and unforeseen advances in technology, some which support and others that bypass Manovich’s theories. Like new media itself, new concepts of new media expose the unrealistic aspects of the previous generation." I thought that you were right on. It is difficult for us to see what will become of our observations or ideas until they have time to play themselves out. I wonder what other parts of Manovich's ideas will be natually flushed out over time (or become irrelevant?) with each new generation.
ReplyDeleteWe could always go to UC Santa Barbara for a semester exchange and learn from the man himself! I smell a road trip!
ReplyDeleteThat video makes so much sense! Tom Cruise taller! Kirstie Allie thinner! I just don't know why they didn't use it on Robert Pattinson's muscles in Twilight! Lord knows, that boy needed some muscles!
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