The name is absent

and, more recently, films such as WALL-E (2008, Staton) demonstrate how
‘perfectly real’ the artificial image can be, comparing it, simultaneously,
with lens generated images.

The distrust that animation and computer generated images promote
in audiences should not deny the potential benefits that they imply if we can
be in control of their confusing, perverse effects. In fact, technologically
created images promote the creation of unrealities that facilitate a possible
escape from the frustrating aspects of our reality; further, they function to
reveal things that are ordinarily hidden or unnoticed by our perception.
Computer generated images are able to express what is inexpressible by lens
generated images: the unreal aspects of reality. The paradox is that once we
overcome the distrust of the ‘new image’ there will be an open possibility to
reveal fears related to our society, technology and future. A film like WALL-E,
over and above its status as a commercial, family entertainment product, is a
useful incipient example of this. In WALL-E the most developed visual
technology is used to recreate the future, a future in which the environment
has been destroyed and the earth is inhabited only by machines. In this
space, in the non-place, humans live a passive life that technology has
physically degenerated, converting them into unthinking consumers who
simply assume the mandates coming from technology without questioning
them.

In WALL-E we can observe how digital media have now achieved pre-
manufactured and fabricated images with a similarity and fidelity to the
original never expected before. The direct consequence of the ability of
technology to create simulacra is that reality and fiction have been
(con)fused and the concept of authenticity is becoming irrelevant. In this
respect, we have to be aware that even if artificially generated images offer
us a more attractive version of reality, they are not ‘harmless’. The mere
substitution of reality means something in itself: it indicates that we are not
as far as we thought towards finding a habitable alternative to our world,
replacing ‘standard’ reality by its representation. We are in the process of
pronouncing that virtuality is the new reality.

- 46 -

<<   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   >>

More intriguing information