|
 |
|
Meta-Morphing Visual Transformation and the Culture of Quick Change Vivian Sobchack, editor |
|
|
Exposes the history of digital morphing and its cultural meaning. Two thousand years ago, Ovid asked his readers to imagine metamorphoses in which men and women became flowers and beasts. Today, before our cinema-savvy eyes, people melt and re-form as altogether new creatures: they "morph." This volume explores what digital morphing means--both as a cultural practice specific to our times and as a link to a much broader history of images of human transformation. Meta-Morphing ranges over topics that include turn-of-the-century "quick-change" artists, Mesoamerican shamanic transformation, and cosmetic surgery; recent works such as Terminator 2, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Heavenly Creatures, and Forrest Gump; and the transformations imagined by writers such as Kafka, Proust, and Burroughs. The contributors look not only at the technical wizardry behind digital morphing, but also at the history and cultural concerns it expresses. "A recommended read for instructors and students interested in graphics, communications, or media studies and the effects images have on our culture, what they say about, who they say we are." —techdirections “The volume brings into productive juxtaposition a range of cultural phenomena concerned with transformation and its possibilities, from notions of shape-shifting to mathematical theories of four-dimensional objects to different forms fo magical conjuring.” —symploké “The excellent essays in Meta-Morphing open up the potential of seeing the morph historically and the montage futuristically as our culture’s logic of visual transformation.” —Visual Resources Contributors: Roger Beebe, Scott Bukatman, Victoria Duckett, Kevin Fisher, Joseba Gabilondo, Marsha Kinder, Norman Klein, Louise Krasniewicz, Angela Ndalianis, Matthew Solomon, and Mark J. Wolf. Vivian Sobchack is professor of critical studies in the Department of Film and Television and associate dean of the School of Theater, Film, and Television at the University of California, Los Angeles. 256 pages | 4 black-and-white photos, 6 figures | 5 7/8 x 9 | 2000 |
||
$25.00 Paper