Tackling digital effects such as colourisation, time-ramping, compositing and photo-realistic rendering, this monograph explores how the growing use of these post-photographic procedures shapes our relationship with the image and the world that the image represents. At stake is the ability to critically engage with the digital techniques that mediate perceptions of reality. Through a series of case-studies the book connects the dominant techniques of hybridisation with emergent ways of being in our increasingly hybrid physical-digital world. Pointing at the relationship between mainstream visual culture and the manifold imperatives of digital technology and digital culture, Hybrid Images and the Vanishing Point of Digital Visual Effects highlights how a handful of digital visual effects are coming to shape the way we live.
Tom Livingstone is a Research Fellow at the University of the West of England, Bristol. His research explores the relationship between technology, screen aesthetics and visual culture. He has published widely on media-epistemology and digital visual effects and is pursuing new research into game engine technologies supported by a British Academy Talent Development Award.
List of FiguresAcknowledgementsIntroduction: ‘It’s a Dinosaur'1. The Colourised Archive2. Hybrid Spaces, Digital Compositing and Holograms3. The Hybrid Temporal Object4. Computer-Animation and Material CultureConclusionReferencesIndex
“The contemporary literally comprises of multiple, simultaneous, often incompatible times and spaces. Tom Livingstone’s guide to the new visual effects is as fast and furious as the moving image, social and screen aesthetics that help us inhabit this increasingly alien world.”