NAKED CITY: CAN C.G.I. SAVE THE WORLD?
Hands up if C.G.I. or computer generated imagery leaves you cold, if you found The Avatar about as enticing as a plate of sheep’s eyes in porridge or the recent Avengers about as morally corrupt as pack rape. Chances are you belong to a generation which grew up before all manner of digital wizardry consumed old style animation and only real people inhabited our TV and movie screens.
Call us old school Luddites if you like, but there was something organic and distinctly human about the classic stop animation of Ray Harryhausen, the hand drawn artistry of Max Fleischer and those amazing Toho miniatures trampled to dust by a raging Godzilla. A recent American survey has shown that a large number of consumers, brought up on all of the above, have great difficulty in warming to the new computer world and its marauding visual language. It’s apparently a matter of credibility with older folks less likely to be convinced by a monstrous fire breathing dragon, manipulated electronically by a bunch of computer geeks than “innocents” a quarter or even half their age.
Those who have embraced the new technology, where any kind of fantasy becomes possible on the computer screen or in the latest Pixar animation, do so with an almost religious zeal. It’s as if any modern dilemma can be thrown onto a LCD Monitor and heroes created to overcome the utmost adversity and right the most humongous wrong. That’s often the deal with thousands of ultra violent video games where you are the hero, endlessly blowing the heads off all who are evil and anti-American.
Not surprisingly that’s the modus operandi of the new drone warfare whereby military appointed gamers wield joysticks in New Mexico that direct US unmanned aircraft as they hunt down terrorists in Pakistan and Afghanistan along with all the collateral damage that comes with it. Whilst the military plays down the ‘gaming’ aspect, you can bet that the primary skill required for this job is hours spent playing Warcraft III or Bulletstorm. Not only does this breed technical expertise but the kind of dispassionate rigour required when firing a missile at a village that may contain terrorists but more likely contains women and children as well.
Dear me, that’s certainly applying all kinds of sinister associations to a technology that like the current Facebook plague, promises a social and spiritual revolution for all of mankind – well, at least for those able to afford an iPhone. There’s got to be something good that comes out of this groundbreaking whizbangery even if it means saving millions on this year’s New Year’s Eve fireworks by projecting the whole thing C.G.I style on the wings of the Opera House and an enormous white sheet. It’s all a boozy blur the next day for thousands of Sydney revellers so why give them reality when computer generated pyrotechnics are almost just as good – and a fraction of the cost of the real thing.
Once that milestone is achieved the floodgates will open to replace all frivolous cultural, council and government spending with computer generated versions of everything from La Trav on Sydney Harbour to Breakfast On The Bridge. It’s hard to get your head around but even the Bourke Street cycle path will be switched on or off with the click of a mouse.
Can C.G.I save the world? Let’s say the virtual jury is still out!
