Zeuxis meets RealityEngine - Digital Realism and Virtual Worlds
Abstract:
How is the realism of a synthetic image different from the realism of the optical media? Is digital technology in the process of redefining our standards of realism as determined by our experience with photography and film? Do computer games, motion simulators and VR represent a new kind of realism that relies not only on visual illusion but also on the bodily, multi-sensory engagement of the user with a simulated world? Some of my previous writings addressed these questions in relation to digital cinema, computer animation and digital photography. In this essay, I discuss a number of characteristics which define visual realism in virtual worlds.
Article sections:
1. Realism as Commodity
In a digital representation, all dimensions that affect the reality effect — detail, tone, color, shape, movement — are quantified. As a consequence, the reality effect produced by the representation can itself be related to a set of numbers.
2. Romanticism and Photoshop Filters: From Creation to Selection
Here is another characteristic of virtual worlds: they are not created from scratch but assembled from ready-made parts. Put differently, in digital culture creation has been replaced by selection.
3. Brecht as Hardware
Another characteristic of virtual worlds lies in the peculiar temporal dynamic: constant, repetitive shifts between an illusion and its suspense. Virtual worlds keep reminding us about their artificiality, incompleteness, and constructedness. They present us with a perfect illusion only to reveal the underlying machinery next.
4. Riegl, Panofsky, and Computer Graphics: Regression in Virtual Worlds
The last feature of virtual worlds that I will address can be summarized as follows: virtual spaces are not true spaces but collections of separate objects. Or: there is no real space in virtual worlds.