Miriam Ross,3D Cinema: Optical Illusions and Tactile Experiences.

Abstract

3D cinema has drawn the attention of film and media scholars since its digital revival in 2008 and 2009. Wellington-based scholar Miriam Ross has now published one of the first major monographs on the topic of (digital) 3D films. What makes 3D so attractive for film studies is that it allows scholars to revisit and reconsider major theories and specific periods in film history as well as ontological discussions on the nature of film. One of the strengths of Ross’s study is her embedding of the recent 3D trend into the history of stereoscopy and a general history of film, with a special focus on the early cinema of attractions. This leads to the thoughtful avoidance of generalizations concerning the status of 3D. Instead, 3D cinema’s specificities and possibilities are explored, while Ross stresses that these are not without predecessors and similarities in traditional cinema. In order to distinguish 3D cinema from other forms of cinema, however, she establishes a tripartite model of cinema: traditional flat screens, the haptic cinema screen and the hyper-haptic 3D field screen. Traditional flat screens are characterized as being based on a rather distant viewership and a dominance of optical impressions over haptic sensations. With the concept of haptic cinema, Ross draws mainly on Laura U. Marks’s notion of intercultural cinema, 1 which encourages the reduction of controlled distance as well as an ‘involved and sensory response to the film’s images’ (p. 19). For 3D cinema, Ross argues, a new mode has to be assumed, which she calls hyper-haptic. The hyper-haptic emerges because of viewers’ reduced distance from what is presented, ‘a shared space between objects and audience’ (p. 99) and, especially with regard to CG animation, ‘depth qualities of [...] textures’ (p. 191). Yet she carefully speaks throughout the book about the ‘possibilities offered by 3D’ and ‘what 3D may offer’ (p. 15). Thus there is no such thing as the ontology of 3D cinema, but rather characteristics varying according to formal realizations.