Controles y trabajos de mantenimiento periódicos 42 

One mistake in media analysis is to regard media production as a perfect process, as if everything is a direct expression of the storyteller’s intentions and professionality. This is not the case, and the productions I have participated in and my interviews with other media producers bring forward some of the production culture

The computer graphics and live action divide

When movie makers produce shots that are supposed to show a virtual

environment, they have two production approaches to choose between.58 _One

approach is to use computer graphics in order to build the environment as a 3d model (an actual virtuality) and then render it. In this case, the artist use technology and artistic skill to add details to the originally empty 3d model, thereby increasing realism. In this approach, the work with increasing realism does not go all the way to full photorealism. Instead, the work stops somewhere between the abstract and the realistic, in order to convey virtuality. What conveys virtuality then is the lack of realism that comes from the production method itself. The other production

approach is to not use computer graphics, and instead shoot live action. During the 90s, virtual worlds in movies started to be realized by shooting actual actors and physical sets. They were then made to appear virtual by a range of different signs: unnatural color grading, image artifacts, and signs related to the narrative and the dialogue. Instead of adding realism, realism was taken away from footage that originally appeared real. The Matrix, Avalon, The Thirteenth Floor and eXistenZ are all examples of this.

During the 80s and 90s, the makers of movies such as Tron, The Lawnmower Man and Johnny Mnemonic primarily used computer graphics, the first approach outlined above, to portray the fictive virtuality. These computer graphics were similar to the technology that was used to create the actual virtual reality environments of those days. Limitations in technology then became the source of signs of virtuality. When Tron was produced, the computer graphics of the day was highly limited. Rendering algorithms only allowed simple shadows, it was difficult to apply complex surface textures, and 3d models had simple shapes. The limitations to 3d modeling were such that simple, geometric shapes and flat textures prevailed. Signs such as [abstract] and [geometrical] were motivated by such production procedures and such technical limitations. As Bill Kroyer, storyboard artist at Tron, explains in an interview (Pellerin, 2002, at 03:28):

It was this constant give and take of visual requirements with their technical possibilities that created Tron.

Today we have the technical capability and artistic skills to create fully

photorealistic virtual environments, and thus it is more common to use the second production approach outlined above. The paradigmatic repertoire of signs is

broader thus, and signs of virtuality can be more arbitrary. This might have freed movie makers creatively to more or less abandon computer graphics to create fictional virtualities, in favor of live action. When real-life computer graphics could create photorealism it became uninteresting to accentuate the computer graphic style when signifying virtuality, and live action was used instead. Also, it might be that shooting live action is to a large extent a creative decision grounded in

production circumstances. After all, it is easier – and more cost effective – to shoot

58 _{Making the movie as an 2d animated movie – a cartoon – is actually a third production}

an actor and then color grade her than it is to build and then animate the same characters using computer graphics. The effect is that the virtual worlds we see portrayed in contemporary movies appear much more realistic, and not as abstract as their predecessors. Flueckiger (2008) suggests that during the 1980s and early 1990s, fully photorealistic virtual characters where so “inconceivable” that they were considered “unattainable” (p.13). It might be that it was not until the late 1990s that photorealistic virtual characters could have been plausibly incorporated into fictional narratives, and thus the production method of shooting and then color grading live actors was opened up.

Since the two Tron movies bridge the time between the early productions using computer graphics, and the later productions using live action, it is interesting to discuss how the sequel Tron Legacy was produced. The production crew of Tron Legacy shot actors on sets. It featured much more visually complex and realistic environments, trying to find a balance between on the one hand an abstract

virtuality and on the other hand a rich, dense and spectacular virtuality that almost seems physical. Since the mise-en-scène and visual style of the virtual world of Tron Legacy is highly realistic and almost fully physical (with virtual smoke from virtual tires, virtual skid marks on the virtual ground, virtual clouds in the sky, and so on), the movie makers had to rely on subtle color grading, production design, super- natural actions and dialogue to signify virtuality. The production design of the movie indulges in a visual feast of virtuality; the obligatory metaphor of the glowing lines is taken up from the original Tron. Everything is aglow, representing electricity and hence virtuality. However, at the same time, the production design defies and shies away from the virtual. The visual style is highly photorealistic – as opposed to the stylized and often cartoonish Tron – and the director Joseph Kosinski mentions in interviews that he deliberately wanted to have a very physical version of virtuality (Nathan, 2011; Pollack, 2011). In flashback shots, we see the avatars of the humans Kevin Flynn and Alan Bradley, wearing stylish black leather jackets, with only one reference to the production design of the original Tron-suites – a white glowing

stripe running along the front of the jacket.59 _{It is as if the director Kosinski and}

production designer Darren Gilford cannot make up their minds; is it cool to be virtual, or is it nerdy? Tron Legacy is based on the legacy of the original Tron movie, and Kosinski seems to believe that the abstract and cartoony style of the first movie is a bit too much for modern audiences, accustomed to the apparently real virtual prisons of The Matrix, The Thirteenth Floor and Inception.

Literature obviously does not have the production limitations that movie productions have, but William Gibson nevertheless let his cyberspace be highly influenced by the real-world limitations of computer graphics. Examples of abstract virtual objects include “the little yellow pyramid” and “bright geometries

representing the corporate data” in Burning Chrome, and the “stepped scarlet pyramid of the Eastern Seaboard Fission Authority burning beyond the green cubes of the Mitsubishi Bank of America” in Neuromancer. Sabine Heuser (2003) has also discussed the latter passage, and Istvan Csicsery-Ronay (1992) has made similar

observations, commenting that Gibson’s cyberspace seems to be built by “rapidly moving geometrical figures of light in a metaphorical transformation of solids” (p.236). William Gibson conveys a landscape built of artificial, immaterial abstraction.

When the virtual becomes a spectacle

The representations of virtuality that I have studied are often deeply integrated with the narrative. They are not wallpaper added just to help the audience distinguish virtual from the actual, on the contrary they are a central backbone of the story. This often makes it impossible to separate the designs of the fictive virtuality from the requirement of telling a dramatic and compelling story. Many signs of virtuality are also used to dramatize events, forming the spectacle of the narrative. Thus signs of virtuality not only have the function of representing virtuality, but sometimes the double function of bringing spectacle to the narrative. Sometimes this might be their only function. Spectacle has been theorized, most notably by Guy Debord in his La Société du spectacle (1967). His main argument is that mass media have replaced lived experiences and human interaction with mere representation, and being has been replaced by appearing. Spectacle has a political dimension, but can be discussed disconnected from the ideology of Debord. Some movie makers object to

cinematic spectacle on both aesthetic and implicitly political grounds, maybe most noteworthy Lars von Trier when he justified the Dogme 95 manifest with the lament that “anyone at any time can wash the last grains of truth away in the deadly embrace of sensation. The illusions are everything the movie can hide behind” (von

Trier, 1995, p.1).60 _{Political implications aside, there are aesthetical and narrative}

hazards with spectacle. Just as with the aesthetics of sexy, the aesthetics of spectacle often rely on extravagant exposure. Exposure of skin can be sexy, and to create spectacle other things need to be exposed, for example, advanced technology, huge spacecraft, and large-scale destruction in slow-motion detail. As pointed out by Baudrillard (1990), there is a pornographic dimension to the totalizing hyper-reality that he speaks about. But, too much exposed skin becomes un-sexy, and too large a spacecraft, or too huge an explosions become un-cool. Both sexy and spectacle must push the boundary, but not penetrate it.

When Neo and Smith perform their epic battle over the virtual metropolis in The Matrix Revolutions, when Tron Legacy’s Sam Flynn materializes his light bike in a cascade of light, or when Sam Tyler in Life on Mars sleeps in his leather jacket… is it virtual, or is it just spectacle? It is reasonable to assume that sometimes a specific expression is merely a spectacle, and sometimes carries the meaning of virtuality and being a spectacle. Consider the scene in The Matrix Reloaded, where the virtual character Merovingian forces a virtual woman to orgasm using computer code hidden in a (virtual) dessert cake. The primary meaning of the scene is to depict Merovingian as unsympathetic and to create a spectacular situation. Indirectly, the

60 _{A few years later von Trier directs the spectacular art-house-porn-horror Antichrist and then the}

dystopian science fiction Melancholia, both embracing visual effects without the slightest hint of embarrassment. This suggests that von Trier does not reject the possibilities that the spectacular manipulation of the image have opened up, rather he reflects on it.

scene also portrays aspects of the virtuality, since it is an example of a character using code in order to take control over someone else. As I will discuss frequently in this poetics of virtuality, many signs of virtuality have a tight unification between what they denote, what they connote, and thus, these signs often have an aesthetic of spectacle. It might even be obvious that representations of the virtual are

perceived as spectacle. Technology can be regarded as a spectacle, as illustrated by action heroes such as James Bond and Iron Man, who rely on spectacular high-tech devices. Virtuality is characterized by technology, and often extraordinary such. Therefore, an effective way to signify virtuality is to contrast it with the ordinary, with the nature, and instead make it stand out. This can be the flickering of a hologram, opposing it to the calm and steady nature of a physical object. It can be the supernatural speed and strength of Neo, opposing his capabilities to our weak actual bodies. So there are numerous signs of the supernatural that connote

virtuality, and since they stand out from the ordinary, such signs also create visual interest and spectacle.