(Ivan’s Lecture on 10th
November 2011)
Realism means “Close
resemblance to what is real; fidelity of representation, rendering the precise
details of the real thing or scene.” (Oxford
English Dictionary online)
There are two different
views describing the concept of Realism, one is Nikolai Chernishevsky
(1828-89), he said “The first purpose of art is to reproduce reality.” Whereas
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) said “‘Realism is a corruption of reality.” These
are two completely different opinions reinforcing their concepts of Realism,
and for me, I would say I would agree with Wallace Stevens because of the world
we live in, the 3D/VFX/Games technology have advanced so fast, their work have
become so realistic that nowadays we cannot recognise [unless we get told otherwise]
which is real or not. Sometimes it feels like we live in the world of Matrix.
So I would think that Steven’s theory would apply to the world we live in now.
Even though Nikolai Chernishevsky, his theory would in a way apply to the 3D
and VFX artists because we are thriving to create realism in our work. Both
opinions are completely different but both reinforced the hypothesis of
Realism.
Jay David Bolter and
Richard Grusin: their theories of Realism
Remediation is
a dream of media is to erase itself
Immediacy means the medium vanishes, e.g. ‘getting lost’ in a
book, suspending disbelief in a film (note: immediate means ‘without mediation’, i.e. real)
Hypermediacy is the medium draws attention to itself, e.g.
judging book by cover, marvelling at special effects.
Ivan then started talking
about computer games, compared to retro games in 1970s to now, in 1970s,
they’re more basic and too simple and limited vector based, like for instance,
Space Invaders, Asteroids, or Sonic the Hedgehog or old Sega games. And now, we
have Call of Duty, Halo, Need For Speed, and so on, all becoming so realistic
in visual aspect. You can see that the convention of Realism have changed,
because back then, there were plenty of room to improve their quality of the
games and films, they are more fun, and more recognisable on what’s real and
what’s not. But now, the technology are unbelievable (well technically the 3d
work are very believable but im not referring to that, I meant unbelievable as
in amazing!) the tech went from 2D to 3D to 4D! there are already realistic holograms,
like you used to see in Star Trek and Star Wars, but now it had become a
reality. Before it was just dreams and designs but now all have come alive (virtual
speaking)
The main goal of Realism is
to interact with the audience, to get them to be involved with their awe
virtual world, and also they give the audience a chance to escape from the real
reality to weird warp fake reality.
