Same old shit
‘To this end, you were among the first to
have their bodies destructively scanned
for vector upload.’
David Roden
(Letters from the Ocean Terminus)
3D computer graphics is the (old) new standard in image making. Its widespread application is propelled by the newly found demand for immersive design, high-fidelity resolution, object replication processes (3D scanning, printing) and the recent upheaval in the development of virtual reality technologies. 3D is the industrial norm for video games, advertisements, architectural blueprints, collection catalogs and even for worldviews (Google Earth, geomapping). Compared to the ’50s, 3-D has gone mainstream, emancipated from the fenced-off gardens reserved for specialists-only. Vectorized models of 3 axis are to be found on a number of online image depositories (turbosquid, 3dexport), where raw files or high/low-poly images are offered up for sale.
While traditional representations are flat, computer-aided 3-D graphics are embodied in space. These ’image objects’ re-create physical bodies with every single atom of their appearance being represented by a point in an x,y,z scale unfolding from unlimited perspectives. 3-D models, instead of being in ontological relation with the ‘real’ (as photographs), are mathematical representations captured by geometric structures (polygon mesh, triangles, lines, curved surfaces).
In theory, virtual objects stand close to the Platonic idea of essences as their fabric is made of pure data. They present an upgraded reality of uncorrupted endurance and flawless perfection. »The Internet as the realm of “timeless data” is the place where the cybercast can wander around as a free spirit detached from its physical condition.« (Nusselder, 2014)
As a consequence of their mode of production, virtual objects are intact from erosion, devastation or decay in an organic sense. „The problem with computer-generated objects is that they are too clean, too perfect. My job is to make them more dirty, more realistic” — says the 3D animator in a Simon Fujiwara film (Hello, 2015).
In an era so keen of experiencing the Real, however, the status of virtual objects stands in a chronic disconnection from the Real. In order to meet the criteria of worldliness in place of otherworldliness, contemporary image making had to go out of the way. Realism proved to be the right cure that successfully counters techno-transcendence: it freezes mortality and chains the potentiality of the sublime back to earth. It’s aesthetic result is not the ‘bad image’ (Hitho Steyerl) ripped off thousand times from the ‘original’ to circulate on the web, but the high-tech trash that gives back the familiar sensation of something being ‘as it is’, rather than ‘more-than-itself’.
