The futurists are on the side of 3D, even with silly-looking glasses and 19th-century stereoscopy, while luddites rail against it just because they don’t know any better? Think again. A good, long look at Super Mario Brothers might just change the way you think about time in media – seriously.
The advent of photography and cinema brought with them revolutionary ideas about the nature of time, connected to ideas spanning the gamut from narrative to science. So what’s the next big idea in aesthetics and thought?
Gabriel Shalom, reaching CDM via Twitter, takes up that question in spectacular fashion in a spoken manifesto on aesthetics he calls hypercubism. He draws on the relationship between cubist painters and cinema and argues the new metaphor, from gaming, is object-oriented. Welcome to the fourth dimension.
And yes, all this leads to Gabriel picking up on growing criticism of stereoscopic 3D. See, previously here on CDM:
Walter Murch Identifies 3D’s Shortcomings; A Non-Luddite Plea for the Imperfection of Illusion
But that goes well beyond what technological delivery apparatus, to the issue of how narrative and aesthetics take up new dimensions in media.
There are more questions here than answers, and I’m not sure that even Obi-Wan Kenobi appearing as a hologram really would satisfy some of those questions. But it could get you thinking, not only about finding technological solutions to these artistic dilemma, but finding expressive solutions, too.
Well worth a watch. And see also Gabriel’s Quantum Cinema blog for more brain candy and future cinema ideas:
http://quantumcinema.blogspot.com/
http://www.gabrielshalom.com/