CHArt TWENTY-FOURTH ANNUAL CONFERENCE
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Seeing…Vision and Perception in a Digital Culture |
David Humphrey, Royal College of Art, London
Seeing What You Believe, Believing What You See: Revisiting ‘Photorealism’
Issues surrounding the relationships between digital modelling, animation, visualisation and ‘photorealism’ have been argued over for as long as the core digital technologies enabling them have been available. ‘Photorealism’ for many is a grail: for others it is unobtainable or irrelevant. Agreeing a definition for ‘photorealism’ has proved a key area of controversy. As simplistic as, ‘Is that a photograph of an apple?’ may appear simplistic but it is one possible measure for ‘photorealistic’ output from digital visualisation systems.
Such systems have now evolved to a level of sophistication which repositions issues related to ‘photorealism’ into new territory. Crucially those systems are capable of supporting an approach in which detailed modelling of complex objects is possible via sub-division-based applications, animated output is driven more by simulation engines than by key framing and visualisation is supported by unbiased rendering engines. It is now possible to construct objects, make them move and interact through simulation and be visually represented at a level of fidelity which places such objects into a domain where they may be considered as digital doppelgangers: manifestations from the world we live in. ‘Photorealism’ as a term is fast becoming redundant: ‘simulated realism’ is a more encompassing and relevant description.
This paper examines issues surrounding how systems of such sophistication and their output require a re-evaluation of our willingness to believe and trust what we see before us and to what extent we can make decisions on the information they provide and how it will affect our lives in the future. At one end of the spectrum such systems will play major roles in the evolution of new breakfast cereals: at the other they will become front ends for our understanding of our own mortality via next-generation body imaging systems. The paper is based on outcomes from research supported by the Leverhulme Trust, SRIF2 and the Royal College of Art Research Development Fund.