Software and the Moving Image: Back to the Screen

Abstract

Introducing an innovative approach to digital images, Wood explores what software tells us about moving images. Her discussion starts with the logic of realism informing representational spaces in many moving images found in live-action films, games, animations and data visualizations. These are contrasted with sequences found in Iron Man 3, Oblivion, Rango and Journey that map onto a reality drawing its contours from ‘digital space’. Describing digital contours, Wood builds on her discussion of software based on interviews and analysis of Autodesk Maya. Digital contours are explained as movements and proximities in a digitally configured space. Based on non-representational theories used by cultural geographers, Software and the Moving Image puts forward more-than-representational space to explain the experience of digital contours in moving images.