Review: Image Objects: An Archaeology of Computer Graphics, by Jacob Gaboury

Abstract

Book Review| June 01 2022 Review: Image Objects: An Archaeology of Computer Graphics, by Jacob Gaboury Image Objects: An Archaeology of Computer Graphics by Jacob Gaboury Kyle Stine Kyle Stine KYLE STINE teaches film and media studies at Johns Hopkins University. His writings on cinema and technology have appeared in Critical Inquiry, Discourse, Grey Room, October, and the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies. He is coeditor with Axel Volmar of Media Infrastructures and the Politics of Digital Time: Essays on Hardwired Temporalities (Amsterdam University Press, 2021). Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar BOOK DATA Jacob Gaboury, Image Objects: An Archaeology of Computer Graphics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2021. $35.00 hardcover; 312 pages, 133 b&w photos, 20 color plates. Film Quarterly (2022) 75 (4): 97–99. https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2022.75.4.97 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Kyle Stine; Review: Image Objects: An Archaeology of Computer Graphics, by Jacob Gaboury. Film Quarterly 1 June 2022; 75 (4): 97–99. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2022.75.4.97 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentFilm Quarterly Search BOOK DATA Jacob Gaboury, Image Objects: An Archaeology of Computer Graphics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2021. $35.00 hardcover; 312 pages, 133 b&w photos, 20 color plates. Computer graphics, to paraphrase an insight from Jacob Gaboury’s Image Objects: An Archaeology of Computer Graphics, are commonly understood to be at their best when they are least apparent. If audiences notice an effect work, it is likely to its detriment—just witness animadversions against films like The Mummy Returns. Histories of computer graphics have for this reason tended to focus on the inexorable march toward improved realism. Gaboury takes a different tack, eschewing almost entirely the direct concerns of film and television for a perspective at once more focused and more expansive, a prehistory that redefines both graphics and computers. Image Objects comes amid a period of industry self-reflection on the history of digital animation, as its prominent innovators—Ed Catmull and... You do not currently have access to this content.