Dirty data: the impact of diminishing materiality and the close-up on abject and corporeal representation in computer generated imagery.

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Copyright: Kriss, Karen
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Abstract
Rapid and ongoing developments in the field of computer-generated imagery (CGI) have reached a point where the synthetic image strives to become almost indistinguishable from the real. This desire for realism in the filmic image has seen CGI thrive in mainstream popular culture: from Hollywood cinema through to advertising. Large visual effects (VFX) and CGI animation companies are often at the vanguard of research and development in this area, driving CGI development toward the production of realism. This over-investment in ‘realistic’ imaging has all but erased the potential for broad experimentation in CGI techniques and aesthetics, and has seen the emergence of an aesthetic realism manifested by the eradication of error and materiality, wherein all traces of the process of production are excised from the image. This research project explores the technical and aesthetic effects of the erasure of error in contemporary CGI and how this affects the capacity of CGI to approach the abject as defined by Julia Kristeva. Focusing on the ‘trace’ in motion capture and its relationship to the power of the close-up image in film and photographic contexts, I look at how digital artefacts can exist as a critical part of a process of experimentation in CGI. These ‘errors’ take the form of unprocessed motion capture data, unfiltered, compression image artefacts and low-sample rate renders, as well as reduced polygonal modelling techniques. Exploring the production of images that embrace these ‘errors’ affords the possibility to introduce ‘fallibility’ and embodied artefacts into the system of image production, and reveal both a material trace of the technology as well as the artist. This research identifies technical and aesthetic processes that introduce a greater degree of haptic visuality into CGI images, as a means of approaching abjection. These experiments in motion capture techniques, code transformations, and close-up lenticular imagery, introduce error and materiality into CGI in order to interrogate the material field and affective (or abjective) power of the CGI close-up. Through these practical experiments, I argue that the viewer is afforded greater access to haptic visuality: a tactile experience of images which is crucial to experiencing the abject, and which moves beyond mainstream CGI's use of grotesque imagery. Further, these experiments reveal the possibilities for the creation of new and engaging CGI aesthetic forms that embrace the digital artefact, and which re-insert the abject body and trace into the digital realm.
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Author(s)
Kriss, Karen
Supervisor(s)
Barker, Michele
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Publication Year
2016
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Thesis
Degree Type
Masters Thesis
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