Realistic Computer Graphics: From Lil Miquela to Cats (Core Post 1)

Bolter & Grusin’s discussion of our culture’s desire for immediacy in technology was particularly intriguing to me when they challenged Bazin’s theories. They write that “Bazin (1980) concluded that ‘photography and the cinema . . . are discoveries that satisfy, once and for all and in its very essence, our obsession with realism,’ yet he was certainly wrong. These two visual technologies did not satisfy our culture's desire for immediacy (240). Computer graphics has become the latest expression of that desire.” Bolter & Grusin then explain how synthesized images can be even more accurate or photorealistic than actual photos, and that there is evidence of how sometimes some observers aren’t able to distinguish these computer-generated images from real/raw photographs (26). This immediately made me think of CGI/fake robot/Instagram influencer Lil Miquela. 

Miquela is a CGI fictional character with 1.6 million followers on Instagram. She is a singer, model, fashion designer and overall social media influencer. She has had brand deals with major fashion brands, being featured in a recent Calvin Klein video ad with Bella Hadid, she posts photos hanging out with celebrities like Diplo and The Chainsmokers, and writes journal entries exploring her life and feelings as a “robot”. There’s a storyline for her character; she’s supposed to be a robot trying to navigate the real human world, but she’s the project of a design company called Brud, which also has two other CGI characters on Instagram that regularly interact with Miquela. This project came to mind while reading Bolter & Grusin because Miquela’s rise to fame was due to people originally not being able to decide whether her posts were photos of a real person or a CGI character. Her photos are so realistic that if you simply scroll through her feed without paying much attention to details you might think that the photos show a real human being.

With this new media desire for immediacy and a need for more and more computer graphics substituting real photographic images, I wonder what this does to the way we consume media and the type of media we expect (or want) to see. Because we are reaching such perfect (and somewhat deceiving) level of visual representation of life, will we just crave more and more art and entertainment that looks real but is digital simply for the novelty factor? Will we prefer this type of content over human-only art? Was creating CGI humanesque cat figures really the best strategy to tell the story of the upcoming live-action Catsmovie or was it done for the exploration of technology and indulgence in this new possibility? If thinking of remediation and the current re-make era in the film industry, maybe relying on pre-existing stories to draw audiences is what allows new entertainment to explore with new technology. We already know Cats, we already know the influencer narrative, so maybe we’re really consuming this type of content for the novelty factor of the technology.