...digital fantasy

"In an increasingly digitised media environment we are seeing a greater and greater blurring between fantasy and reality, which impacts in complex ways on peoples' everyday lives" In the form of a 10min presentation, discuss this idea.

After all the heavily games-related lectures, I've been finding it somewhat difficult to relate the content to an animation-based view. However, I love the theme of 'what is real?' which is essentially where the main content of this presentation lies - When fantasy and reality are parts of a scale, rather than two separate entities, how can you really separate the two? And in that case, how can you really be sure as to what is 'real' and what isn't. As a concept, it has the ability to completely destroy the held beliefs of the media image.

For the terms of the lectures, the subesquent presentations and probably all theory for the course in general, 'real' and 'reality' should probably be more appropriately names 'PHOTOreal' and 'PHOTOreality' - the level of 'realness of media as judged by the viewer (i.e. how real a media image is in terms of it's photographic likeness) - in these terms, simple live-action with absolutely NO computer effects would be considered the epitome of 'real'

PLAN FOR PRESENTATION

Intro -
- what is fantasy?
- what is reality?

Fantasy -
- fantasy in animation
- fantasy in games
- obviously an illusion, handmade or machined
- acts as an escape from 'reality'
- examples

(photo)Reality -
- as close to real life as possible
- easily believed as 'real'
- examples

Rise of Virtual Reality -
- transparent imediacy
- purpose is to make fantasy seem real
- gaming apparatus

Rise of CGI -
- more exploitable than 'reality'
- can look 'real'
- blends with 'reality'
- Avatar, Pirates of the Carribean, Transformers, Jurrasic Park

The Blur -
- advance in technology = fantasy is more immersive
- harder to differentiate between 'reality' and 'fantasy'

These are the points that will be researched in to in more depth for the presentation.