These days, video game advertisements look like movie trailers. And video game narratives motivate movie plot lines. A-list actors play virtual heroes on-screen and struggling actors voice the game-worlds. Famous voices garnish computer-generated films and computer-generated characters achieve infamy. Velociraptors and oliphants are one thing, but ‘Avatar‘ gave us an idea as to just how close we are to properly simulating humans on screen.
It is conceivable, if not likely, that within a decade or so, computer-generated actors will be indistinguishable from the real thing. Years of motion capture data will be compiled and synthesized so that everything anatomically possible will be available at a keystroke. Algorithms will be developed for specific actions and will compensate for both subject and surrounding. Just select “take a drink” (shift-apple-d), and Grandma will sip her tea or Cowboy Dan will shoot his whiskey. Choose from a list of 3000 emotional states, combine and prioritize, and fine tune with intensity filters.
In her book ‘Oryx and Crake,’ Margaret Atwood describes a world in which, with a little talent and a few college courses, one can generate simulations in which real people or fictional characters can be shown doing just about anything. In this same world, websites dedicated to live assisted suicides and barbarous child pornography are easily accessed by the average internet user. The horrific becomes mundane, and those images which threaten to tease out an emotional response (other than amusement) are quickly dismissed as most probably counterfeit.
At first blush, a future full of readily available snuff and an aptly desensitized audience might seem terrifying. But here’s the upshot: no more embarrassing Facebook tags. Because, that’s not you, it’s a simulation! No more sex tape scandals, just lots more sex tapes. And now I don’t have to watch the dimwits on TMZ (who strike me as a bunch of high school kids who got the cool teacher for homeroom) make goofy remarks and then snicker amongst themselves. Their services will have been rendered obsolete. Even you Hudson Bay-smashing types, worried about all the increased surveillance, will have one less thing to attack a police officer about. Video evidence will be inadmissible in court based on it being entirely unreliable.
In addition to the sublime portrayal of Jeff Goldblum by none other than Jeff Goldblum, ‘Jurassic Park‘ offered us a glimpse of what new computer rendering and green screen technology could do for extinct creatures and mythical beasts. And it was Neo’s maiden flight at the conclusion of the first ‘Matrix‘ that demonstrated what that same technology might mean for the depiction of super heroes and the otherwise fantastic but human appearing people. After seeing these two movies, the possibilities seemed endless. But in fact, they are not.
The progression will end when exactness is achieved and rendered characters begin to put genuine actors out of work. When Hollywood is deconstructed and rebuilt into something that might vaguely be described as a bunch of programmers – the same type who currently develop video games.
– A. Vice
lt. barclay, hallow pursuits