3-D Cinema: Immersive Media Technology

Abstract

3-D cinema is a largely overlooked media within geographical critique. This omission is notable given both the sustained academic consideration afforded to other popular media, the medium’s significant commercial and popular success, and its status as an ‘affective’ and captivating storytelling medium. With reference to film industry advertisements, the experiential dimensions of the 3-D cinematic encounter and its (popular) framing as an ‘immersive’ consumer experience are explored. In particular, the notion of ‘immersion’ is unpacked with reference to the medium’s engineering and production techniques. In so doing, the intertwinement of the industrial desire for ever more ‘immersive’ and ‘realistic’ consumer experience is explored in relation to the engineering techniques exhibiting perceptual mimicry, or what could be termed ‘mimetic engineering’. The association between 3-D cinema and ‘tactile’ images is then explored with reference to geographic literatures on ‘haptics’ and technologies of touch. A number of recent ‘innovations’ in these fields are drawn upon in order to complicate 3-D cinema’s association with ‘tactility’. In so doing, a technological shift towards the increasingly pervasive and sophisticated engagement of the wider multi-sensory palette is explored. Drawing upon recent media technology ‘innovations’, this persistent and relentless desire for ever more ‘immersive’ and perceptually-convincing media technology is explored in light of developing media geographies.