Interactive Journeys: Making Room to Move in the Cultural Territories of Interactivity

This paper explores the aesthetics and politics of popular cultural computer imagery in games, television and film. The author aims to map a ground for criticism of computer graphics and interactive works—by excavating cultural meanings underlying the dominant aesthetics in these images and asking what they do for their producers and users. Do the metallic bodies armor the user/producer for the fear (delight) of a machine world, producing fear (delight) in the process? Is morphing a technique to evade, or explore, the identity crisis precipitated by awareness of cultural difference? What desires produce and are produced by the gravity-less perspective and movement of three-dimensional animation? The author’s theoretical project explores how popular cultural computer aesthetics and techniques express and (re)produce subjectivity in postmodern culture. These ideas are examined through everyday aesthetic experiences, representational practices and techniques, and the accompanying changes in perception.