Is 3D The Future...?

2009 has been seen as a key year for 3D in the cinema, ranging from Pixar / Disney’s first realisation of their commitment to the format, to the release of the much-hyped Avatar. There have been a seemingly endless number of blog posts and column inches devoted to the arguments surrounding 3D in the movies, so let's take the opportunity to extend the context...

If you have even the teeniest amount of interest in cinema, you’ll almost certainly be aware of the 'recent' trend towards 3D/ stereoscopic – the technology that gives films an added illusion of depth perception, usually by wearing special 3D glasses. And if you have an interest that extends any deeper, you’ll probably be aware of most or all of the following:

1)  3D in film is far from a recent phenomenon.
The Lumière brothers produced a stereoscopic version of their short film L’arrivée du train near the beginning of the last century¹. In the 1950s, the stereoscopic feature Bwana Devil marked the start of a significant proliferation of 3D cinema, including Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder. Despite questions regarding 3D as the future of cinema (not unlike those being raised today), the 2D format remained the mainstay for the rest of the 20th century, with 3D generally restricted to theme parks, IMAX cinemas and the occasional “event” film such as Jaws 3D and Friday the 13th – Part 3.

2) The recent resurgence of 3D is being driven partly as a film industry response to piracy/ home theatres
The film industry had something of a luxury in seeing what piracy and downloads did to the music industry, and knowing  that whatever people did with music they would be able do with movies as technological factors such as download speeds & compression technologies improved. It’s interesting to note how the 1950s trend was also driven as a response to a new home-viewing technological threat – in this case television.

3) James Cameron’s Avatar has been seen as a key moment in 3D
Cameron’s much-hyped film was “in the works” for over a decade. In 2000 Sony agreed to help him develop a new 3D camera-system for the film, and at a budget estimated somewhere between $230 - $400 million dollars there’s a kind of feeling that in the hands of a director like Cameron, it’s the true showcase for the kind of experience that 3D can provide.

Avatar  (2009)

4) There has been an (inevitable?) backlash against 3D
In particular in the UK, BBC Film Critic Mark Kermode is not a fan.

The debate going on between 3D’s supporters and detractors, has all been fluttering around a central question: “This time round, is 3D is here to stay as the future of cinema?”

Two initial points. Firstly, there is no interesting argument to be had about whether 3D can make a 'bad' film a 'good' film. It can’t.The best such a film can hope for is to be a 'bad' film with 'good' 3D effects, just as we can have a 'bad' film with 'good' lighting or a 'good' soundtrack. Detractors who use this obvious fact as evidence against the 3D innovation are not in any way strengthening their case.

The second point is that 3D in film is here to stay. This is a certainty in the short term as the film industry has just invested too much time and money in upgrading all their production equipment and pipelines and cinemas to give it all up too quickly. But more importantly, we know it won’t go away as it has never truly gone away since the start of the previous century.

So in relation to both of these points, we may wonder whether 3D is a technological shift that will play as fundamental role in the film industry as previous shifts like the move from silent movies to 'talkies', or the move from black & white to colour. Lest we forget, while these kinds of technological advances now seem somehow inevitable or natural in cinematic evolution, the advent of sound in cinema caused a huge backlash at the time.²

Kermode argues that 3D is not anywhere in the league of these advances³, though his impartiality is of course deeply questionable seeing as these technologies were already part of the movies he grew up knowing and loving (I wonder what side he’d have been on in the sound debate?). He argues that if a film like Avatar feels immersive, it’s due to being engaged by all the other elements “the drama, the cg visuals, the picture itself”, and basically that the 3D just doesn’t do all that much.

Having seen both Pixar’s Up and Avatar in 3D, I disagree. Throughout both movies, the 3D depth adds an extra element. But so did the colours. So did the technical direction, so did the soundtrack, and so on and so forth. Pixar make untold subtle innovations in every film they make. Do we 'need' each innovation? Of course not. But each innovation weaves itself into the evolution of cinema (and innovations are of course of both 'technological' & 'artistic' natures, though I hate that divide). So why has there been so much focus on 3D as a game-changer, rather than yet another strand in this evolution?

This focus is not only a result of the film industry’s unfortunate hyperbole, singling out 3D as the most important revolution since Colour, but it is also due to the ammunition that 3D provides to its critics through the way it impacts on our film-watching habits –the need to wear annoying glasses, the need to pay more to watch 3D films and the fact that we can’t yet revisit this experience on the small-screen at home, either legally or illegally.

These are all issues that are being, or will be, addressed as the technologies and economies of scale develop. So when asking “Is 3D the future of film”, are we really trying to ask “What is the future of film”? One can generalise that every innovation in film to date has been connected to this word 'immersive' – making the action in front of you feel more real, more like it’s actually there. In which case, should we be questioning the boundaries of the cinema frame itself? Is our desire to move ever further towards the all-immersive Star Trek Holodeck?

A new 3D immersion technology from EON Reality

Again, Kermode believes there’s something inherent in the 2D frame that works for cinema. But the filmmaker Peter Greenaway disagrees.

“The screen is only a screen is only a screen; it's only an illusionary space and I would quarrel seriously with Bizan on the knowledge that cinema is a window on the world. What I’m interested in is present tense, non-narrative cinema on multiple screens, to break away from the restrictions in the way we go to the cinema. I’m looking for 360-degree phenomena and I want to get rid of this notion of the single parallelogram, which is very archaic and old-fashioned.” ^{4 5}

Our capacity for imagining the future development of any artistic artform tends to be limited. Films began life pretty much as moving photographs. In that context it’s easier to understand how a technological innovation like sound didn’t seem quite so inevitable.

But crucially, it’s foolish to treat the development of cinema as if it will exist in some kind of artistic vacuum, only evolving on its own self-analysis, for its own self-improvement. In a beautiful synergy, science fiction movies often take ideas floating around in the ether, hypothesise & visualise them and then spit them back out into reality, and the 'holographic' touch interface technology  in Minority Report is a good case in point. Like Minority Report, Avatar further expounds upon 3D stereoscopic integration in 'real-life' computer graphical user interfaces. James Cameron himself, speaking at Microsoft’s Advance 08 event last year, said:

“So I'm in some hypothetical territory here. I would like to remind, I like to tug on the hem of Microsoft and remind them that they need to be thinking about some future version of Windows that ships fully stereo-enabled that goes in concert with these devices, and that they should be talking to their technology partners, about this, and I think it's going to happen" ⁶

The future of 3D in the film industry is co-dependent on the developments of 3D technology in other areas of our lives, from videogames & sports to home computer interfaces & medical applications – all areas in which new breakthroughs in 3D technology are being seen every month.

3D UIs in Avatar (2009)

If 3D stereoscopic becomes a common standard for our home viewing displays, the technology will be there for the taking by every audiovisual medium whether or not they 'drive' the shift, including whatever we know as 'film'.

So while our tastes and desires of course still fuel technological ideals, technological constraints and opportunities have always in return fuelled artistic development⁷. But crucially, these tastes and desires also allow us the creative freedom to leave a new tool on the table. Black and white films continue to be produced today. Stop-motion is still a popular form of animation, despite the fact that some argue (contentiously) that the same effects could be produced through CG. On a personal level, my most immersive cinema moments in recent times was on an otherwise unremarkable Monday back in 2008, when I took myself to an early afternoon showing of There Will Be Blood. I had the whole theatre to myself and was swept away. 2D cinematic magic.

However, while such traditions will continue to be honoured well into the future, the fact remains that many of the most exciting developments have occurred when a new technology gets driven way past its initial intention - as we know from countless examples from the electric guitar to the internet. 3D stereoscopic is no different. As new innovations cross-fertilise they often stubbornly ignore traditional technological and artistic boundaries. I can’t wait to experience the possibilities as the most creative and accomplished artists get let loose with the new immersive audiovisual tools of tomorrow.

The Immersive i-Cocoon - a revolutionary surround-view display dome

Footnotes
1 The release date of the stereoscopic version of L'Arrivee du Train isn't completely clear, but is sometimes quoted as 1903. See Ray Zone's book Stereoscopic cinema & the origins of 3-D film, 1838-1952 for the backstory.


2 Harry Warner, of Warner Bros Pictures, on hearing of his brother's idea to introduce sound into their movies is memorably quoted as saying "Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?"

3 The Culture Show, 5 November 2009.

7 At the start of the last century, it was a technological platform that changed popular music – the 10-inch 78 rpm record that could hold around 3 minutes of music each side and so gave birth to the 3-minute single.


Some further opposing viewpoints:
Siggraph '08 - Making It Real: The Future of Stereoscopic 3D Film Technology
lovehate - The 3D Movie Resurrection 
Time - 3-D: The Future of Movies
Digital Beat - Does Avatar represent the future of movies? Maybe not
The New Yorker - The Return of James Cameron


 

Conversations Across The Divide

Polymaths & the cross-fertilisation between 'art' and 'science'

Back on Monday November 2nd I very much enjoyed attending a conversation at the ICA London between the author Steven Johnson (Emergence, Everything Bad is Good for you) and the musician, producer, visual artist (and more) Brian Eno. Johnson was there to promote his new book ‘The Invention of Air’ about Joseph Priestley, an 18th Century Englishman who is credited not only with the discovery of Oxygen, but also a host of writings on subjects ranging from electricity to theology, from politics to grammar. He also invented Soda Water.

Brian Eno's '77 million paintings'

Photo by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid

Eno remarked how today we have a mistrust of those people who claim to be a professional in more than one area. The common reaction when he tells someone unfamiliar with his work that he’s both a musician and a visual artist, is one of doubt that he can possibly be good at both. Edward Carr tackles this present-day multiple discipline suspicion in his article ‘The Last Days of the Polymath’. As he points out, a polymath is someone 'who knows a lot about a lot’, but more importantly should ‘do a lot, too’. Eno will be happy that he makes a list of living polymaths that also includes Noam Chomsky and Clive James, but the thrust of Carr’s article is about ‘how poorly today’s polymaths compare with the polymaths of the past’. This inevitable decline in the abilities of people to truly excel in a wide range of disciplines is of course in large part, or perhaps entirely, due to the amazing degree of specialisation that is now required to be really great at any one thing, particularly in making new scientific breakthroughs like Priestley’s.

This specialisation isn’t in itself a bad thing, and that kind of focus is necessary to push at the forefronts of science, art, sports and so on. However, I also believe (like Carr) that over-specialisation risks a potential loss of cross-fertilisation between different disciplines. William Herschel was another true 18th century polymath - a musician, mathematician, engineer and astronomer. Among his many amazing discoveries are the planet Uranus and infrared radiation. However he wasn’t just interested in his disciplines by themselves, but wondered what the relation was between music, maths and star patterns. He developed his own technique of reading the night sky, using inspiration from how he read musical scores. ¹ I believe these cross-inspirations played a huge role in his discoveries.

Photograph taken with film sensitive to infrared radiation

Image from Colour Lovers

In the UK, most students who continue to study beyond 16 are forced to chose just 3 (or 4) subjects for their ‘A-Level’ examinations and I still remember thinking how that was kind of unfair. You may get labelled either “Scientist” or “Artist”², and I think that the UK suffers from this polarisation – particularly in the way that science can be treated by “non-scientists” as some foreign and unintelligible land run by “experts”. And I don’t think that “Hey Kids, Science Is Cool!” type programs like Brainiac are the answer.

At the same time of course, we now have such a wealth of information from all disciplines available online that trying to consume too much too widely runs the opposite danger of over-generalisation to the point of futility. I also don’t want to over-simplify the polarisation; just doing a search for “Art meets Science” reveals many beautiful cross-collaborations. But there are also a lot of token, superficial ones, and I don’t think that we can ever spend too much time investigating new ways of looking at Science through Art, and Art through Science. Just as they have always needed each other to innovate, Art & Science need each other no less today or tomorrow.

An image from Princeton's 2005 'Art of Science' Exhibition
A. Darhuber, B. Fischer and S. Troia

1 Richard Holmes' book 'The Age of Wonder' gives a good account of the achievements of William Herschel and his sister Caroline.

2 Discussions of the potential dangers between a real or imagined divide between art and science have been around for some time - see CP Snow's famous 'Two Cultures' lecture from 1959 - but I don't believe this makes it any less important today

Introduction to 'The Black Page' Premiere

A transcript of my introduction to The Sancho Plan's premiere performance of The Black Page at the Tyneside Cinema on 24th September 2009.

'Hello everyone and thank you all for coming to what is a truly special event for us, one that we’ve been building towards one way or another since The Sancho Plan was formed. The project was founded on the ethos of integration, but right from the start it was our desire to excel in every aspect of craft being integrated – the idea, the visuals, the music, the technology and the performance, and we’re just indebted to all the amazing talents in these varied fields that have contributed & continue to contribute to the project.

We’re also careful not to underestimate the craft of integration itself. We don’t see it so much as simply choosing the best music in isolation, but the right music to match the right visual and so on, for when these things come together in the right way to create a unified work it truly is a beautiful thing. Our aim is the perfect immersive experience. I have a vivid memory surrounding one particular painting at the permanent Dali exhibition in Barcelona, but my memory isn’t so much of the painting itself but of the experience of the painting. For sure, the painting was a beautiful surrealist landscape but coincidently positioned right above my head was an air-conditioning unit that emitted this almost musical rich ominous drone like something from a David Lynch film that for me perfectly complimented the painting, almost sucking me into that unusual landscape. Looking back I was also aware of the other elements that had contributed to the moment – while the rest of the exhibition was in fairly large bright rooms, this painting was in a much smaller, darker room to which the only entrance was through a red curtain. And it’s all of these factors and I’m sure others which were subconscious elements that contributed to my recollection of the experience.

And with today’s rate of technological hardware and software development, as artists we have an amazing array of integration tools available to create the unified immersive experiences of tomorrow. New technologies in themselves aren’t enough however; I’ve always been less attracted to work that seems to exist primarily to demonstrate a new technology. Technology and media are tools to be used to transmit an idea and the skill is to choose the right tool for the right job – or choose when to not use the latest technologies at all.

In The Sancho Plan, we have a belief that to get the best work out of the various artists involved we should let them use the best tools available to their craft, and these are often the ones familiar to them. Anyone who’s worked with a one-stop-shop videogames engine in which you create graphics, sound and interactivity knows that it rarely excels in any of these. Thus our visual artists can work in their favourite 3D package, or stop-motion or traditional hand-drawn animation; our musicians work in their familiar music software; our programming is done in languages such as Actionscript and Lingo; and our interfaces can be any electronic musical instrument or non-musical input capable of sending MIDI. And it’s MIDI, a simple protocol defined in 1982 to connect musical synths that binds everything together.

Electronic interfaces do bring a certain responsibility however, and one I feel well summed up by this picture here of the great French electro band Justice performing live. This picture caused a minor furore around the internet when it was posted the day after one of their high energy gigs - if you look at the back of the instrument of the guy on the left you’ll see it’s completely unplugged. Justice have claimed it was a one-off accident, but what’s interesting was more the reaction and question of the notion of the live performer in electronic music. Humans used to go to watch musical performers on stage because that’s the only way they would be able to hear certain types of music. With recording technology, which lest we forget is a relatively recent blip in the history of music, not only is this need for the performer undermined, but in a lot of cases there was no live performance in the first place. Unless you’re watching Kraftwerk, seeing bobbing heads behind laptops can lack a performative relationship between audience & musician, and risks creating a disconnect between the performers we see and the music we hear.

This in itself doesn’t at all mean you can’t put on an amazing show and many of my favourite shows have been done this way - but as our work is all about the live, the here and now, the thrill of the unique, we wanted the human in the performance. To do this we need to show the audience a language in which we play a hit onstage and the sound and image reacts – this is why we chose to focus on the simplicity of the drums as our starting input mechanisms.

The Black Page is the first piece in which we’ve begun to integrate a keyboard and bass controlling background elements of the visuals. To explain how the black page first came about, two years ago we were due to perform at the Ars Electronica festival, and some months before the performance I got a call asking if we played any Frank Zappa music and if so would we like to form part of the festival’s Zappa-themed evening. I laughed this off as at that point we’d never considered ourselves as the kind of band to do covers, but had a conversation with our drummer Joel, who told me that he’d been spending the last two years learning this legendary Zappa drum solo, The Black Page.

Zappa wrote the black page as a challenge for the drummer in his band, Terry Bozzio. Since then it’s handed around from drummer to drummer, almost as some kind of ultimate test of one’s drumming prowess. Because Zappa himself admitted that the solo isn’t the easiest listen, he wrote a second slightly more melodic version, The Black Page No.2 which he dubbed the teeny-bopper version and tonight you’ll be hearing our take on both of these pieces No 1 followed by No 2.

It just seemed a perfect match to The Sancho Plan’s ideal to use this challenging musical performance integrated with a new standard of visuals. You’ll see a clear Dali inspiration in our imagery tonight – I once read a story that Dali and Zappa met only once in New York in the 60s when they decided to head to Dali’s studio to create a piece together. Apparently they got to the studio but Dali had lost his keys so they never made it in and never met again, so I like to imagine something of an idealised what-if had they got in there. And thanks to the funding we were able to call on the wonderful resources at Golden Square post-production company based in Soho London to help realise this vision.

But we were also aware that as we create new pieces, we want to keep our audience interested and emotionally invested through a longer show, and are keen to develop central characters and an overarching narrative over the length of the feature, and approach these aspects with as much respect as we would when developing a linear film. As such, for The Black Page we engaged a variety of scriptwriters, storyboard artists, character designers, model-makers and we are very much imagining this as the beginning – a single chapter from a potentially longer show.

As exciting as this chapter is for us, so are the vast potentials for future chapters. The next piece could be controlled by a 40-piece orchestra, or dancing troupe or a single gamepad. Or it could be controlled by the audience – either something cosmetic passing around positionally-tracked beachballs to pan sounds or change colours, or something that more directly influences narrative. All technically possible, but we shall always ask– how will these decisions serve the audience experience?

Of course we’re not limited by the single screen either – stage design, lighting and overall choice of venues all become factors to consider whether a cinema, a church or an underground icecave – something Peter Greenway so eloquently touched on from this very stage at his Pixel Palace talk back in March. I’d really like to tip my hat towards the Tyneside, for their recognition of the importance of the challenges facing cinemas in supporting work that stretches beyond the screen, while not losing sight of the joy of the traditional cinematic experience. But I for one am loving this recognition of the joy of coming together to enjoy new forms of live entertainment communally. This focus is of course being driven partly through music & film industry necessity in their forced shifting business models in the days where the free sharing of data is hard to control, but this is not a wonderful opportunity and not a threat to the future evolution of art and entertainment.

While I can’t ever imagine not enjoying the music & cinema of yesterday and today, I can’t wait to see, hear and experience the forms of live, communal and immersive entertainment not yet imaginable.

With that I’d like to thank again the Tyneside & all their staff, in particular Mark Dobson for his vision leading back to a single conversation in the Roxy upstairs. Thanks to Tom Harvey for taking a punt, and to all our funders who have given us this special opportunity – we hope you can see and hear your money well spent. The production team, too many to mention but credited at the end, and our wonderful producers Beckie and Georgia who through their generous passion & energy have made this happen. Special thanks to the ever unsung heroes – family, friends and partners in the audience today. And again thanks to you for coming - we hope you enjoy The Black Page.'

Ed Cookson, 24th September 2009

The Lazy Burden

 

The Lazy Burden
Ed Cookson (2009)
Digitally Treated Photographs

Artwork created for the album of my great friend Koen Park. Underwater creatures shot on my Canon EOS 40D Digital SLR at the Horniman Museum, South London.