Why 3D?

Why 3D?:

                During the late 90’s, a series of popular sitcoms attempted to boost their ratings by incorporating a relatively new technology into one of their episodes: 3D. I remember watching one such episode of Home Improvement with a growing sense of disappointment in the failure of the technology in recreating the kind of environment I had come to expect from the 3D technologies I had experienced at theme parks. In many ways, I believe my disappointment stems from the fact that I had developed an appreciation for the sensation of 3D because it allowed me an opportunity to interact with the images on a screen (or have them interact with me) in a much more “sensational” way than simply watching a two dimensional movie or TV show. Thus when I saw this poorly executed 3D version of Home Improvement I began to realize that the way I sense 3D is very much dependent on a certain technology.

                What interests me about 3D movies in relation to Sensorium is how 3D technology augments Caroline Jones description of modernism’s separation and segmentation of our sensory field. Jones writes, “Hearing, like seeing, has always been part of producing the self; modernism achieved this in ways profoundly different from earlier historical moments-separating, segmenting, and bureaucratizing the subject in conjunction with similar initiatives in markets, governments, pedagogy, and biomedical research”.

How does 3D technology challenge these modernistic ideals of separation and bureaucratization? For me, 3D movies and 4D theme park attractions are a unified, embodied experience of sensation and any attempt to separate seeing, hearing, smelling, and touching is not only limiting to the overall sensation but extremely difficult. One particularly traumatic experience I had as a kid involved a ride called Alien Encounters where an animatronic alien was trapped in a glass tube in the center of a room and when the lights went out a series of sound effects, air compressors, and other physical stimuli created the perception that the alien had escaped and was now running around the room looking for its next meal. The fear and anxiety created in this experience made separation of sensory stimulus very unlikely and undesired on the part of both the rides creators and many of the park guests who wished to “buy in” to the experience.

                What then can be said about the recent revival of 3D technology in theatre complexes across the world? Is this a reunification of the senses? Were they ever really separated in the first place? I believe the sensational power of a 3D or 4D experience exists just as much in the fiction or narrative that is represented as it does in the technology. The most memorable 3D movies to me as a kid were the ones that interacted with me in a more memorable way. Sometimes characters would come off the screen and appear to be floating in front of my face as they spoke directly to me. If anything, 3D experiences are only possible because they collapse our senses and perceptions into a direct interaction with an entity, much like we perceive another person in a holistic sense. When someone is speaking we don’t just hear them but we see them, smell them, and sometimes even touch them.