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Blade Runner 3D photo scene
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- from Blade Runner (1982)
- Created by Ridley Scott
- Posted bySteve Anderson
A photograph acts as interface to a 3D space
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Commentary prompt for CTCS 505
by Critical Commons ManagerPrompt for commentaries in CTCS 505: Survey of Interactive Media Fall 2010
Assignment: Select one of the clips linked to this commentary and write a commentary analyzing it in terms of one or more course themes or discussion topics. If possible, you should also make reference to at least one reading from the course syllabus or an external source. Your analysis should be thoughtful and substantial, significantly transforming the clip from its original context and/or adding significant "value" to the experience of watching it; you are also welcome to respond to previous comments or make comparisons between clips (in this case, please link the commentary to both clips that are referenced). Remember to tag your commentary with "CTCS505"!
Blade Runner 3-D photo scene
by Steve AndersonIn this scene, a photograph acts as an interface for a three-dimensional space
In this rather famous scene from Blade Runner, Harrison Ford inserts what appears to be an ordinary photograph into a machine that allows him to navigate through a three-dimensional space in order to uncover clues that are not visible in the original image. In 1982, this seemed like an impossibly sci-fi technology. Historically, photographs simply flatten the surfaces of a 3D space and render it as a 2D image. For this technology to work, the image would have to be reinterpreted as a dataset describing the room in three dimensions. The machine Ford deploys interprets the data to allow for virtual movement within a reconstructed version of the space. Multiple approximations of this technology are in common usage in the Visual Effects field in 2009, and the reconstruction of navigable spaces from data is routinely performed by videogame engines. Additional movement in this direction may also be found in Microsoft's Photosynth application that uses machine-vision to create linkages and a simulation of 3D space from multiple 2D images of a given space. All of this adds up to a persistent challenge that is posed to the indexicality and ontological status of photographs in the digital era. I'm not yet sure whether this scene from Blade Runner is hopelessly naive in its fetishistic presentation of this technology or brilliantly prescient for imagining a technology that was barely conceived of when the film was made.