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Image Objects: An Archaeology of Computer Graphics
How computer graphics transformed the computer from a calculating machine into an interactive medium, as seen through the histories of five technical objects.
Most of us think of computer graphics as a relatively recent invention, enabling the spectacular visual effects and lifelike simulations we see in current films, television shows, and digital games. In fact, computer graphics have been around as long as the modern computer itself, and played a fundamental role in the development of our contemporary culture of computing. In Image Objects , Jacob Gaboury offers a prehistory of computer graphics through an examination of five technical objects--an algorithm, an interface, an object standard, a programming paradigm, and a hardware platform--arguing that computer graphics transformed the computer from a calculating machine into an interactive medium.
Gaboury explores early efforts to produce an algorithmic solution for the calculation of object visibility; considers the history of the computer screen and the random-access memory that first made interactive images possible; examines the standardization of graphical objects through the Utah teapot, the most famous graphical model in the history of the field; reviews the graphical origins of the object-oriented programming paradigm; and, finally, considers the development of the graphics processing unit as the catalyst that enabled an explosion in graphical computing at the end of the twentieth century.
The development of computer graphics, Gaboury argues, signals a change not only in the way we make images but also in the way we mediate our world through the computer--and how we have come to reimagine that world as computational.
Most of us think of computer graphics as a relatively recent invention, enabling the spectacular visual effects and lifelike simulations we see in current films, television shows, and digital games. In fact, computer graphics have been around as long as the modern computer itself, and played a fundamental role in the development of our contemporary culture of computing. In Image Objects , Jacob Gaboury offers a prehistory of computer graphics through an examination of five technical objects--an algorithm, an interface, an object standard, a programming paradigm, and a hardware platform--arguing that computer graphics transformed the computer from a calculating machine into an interactive medium.
Gaboury explores early efforts to produce an algorithmic solution for the calculation of object visibility; considers the history of the computer screen and the random-access memory that first made interactive images possible; examines the standardization of graphical objects through the Utah teapot, the most famous graphical model in the history of the field; reviews the graphical origins of the object-oriented programming paradigm; and, finally, considers the development of the graphics processing unit as the catalyst that enabled an explosion in graphical computing at the end of the twentieth century.
The development of computer graphics, Gaboury argues, signals a change not only in the way we make images but also in the way we mediate our world through the computer--and how we have come to reimagine that world as computational.
312 pages, Hardcover
Published August 3, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 6, 2024
Read in Image Objects book club, which was a blast! Rounding up from 3.5 but it's close. Enjoyed this but nothing particularly groundbreaking and at times def verges too academic. The most insightful stuff here was:
(1) The artifacts we see as "computer graphics" are usually meaningfully materially different than how they were actually produced. I.e. lots of old photos of early graphics renderings obscure the fact that, for example, they were long exposure photographs of a line-by-line process on a screen. Basically: the material form of many artifacts of computer graphics are different than the ones presented by traditional histories.
(2) The extent to which the whole world is shaped by graphics. There's a great anecdote in the Coda about how an early graphics pioneer could identify that some toothbrush, given its forms, was designed in AutoCAD vs. Alias. Basically: the affordances of certain graphical programs shape what is produced with them (duh), but more interestingly the extent to which basically all products we interact with today are produced with 3D simulation, or how basically all computer-generated product photography sits in this weird place between real and simulated. Basically: the objects that renders depict, are also now designed with CAD for production, and we might even think of the "true" form of, say, IKEA furniture, as the Solidworks models and renders. There's a lot of interesting play here about how renders sit in a weird place between simulation and reality that I thought was interesting.
Worth a read! I also just love the aesthetics of early graphics and geek over this history — I need to find somewhere in SF to 3D print a Utah Teapot or the Sutherland's beatle for my desk.
(1) The artifacts we see as "computer graphics" are usually meaningfully materially different than how they were actually produced. I.e. lots of old photos of early graphics renderings obscure the fact that, for example, they were long exposure photographs of a line-by-line process on a screen. Basically: the material form of many artifacts of computer graphics are different than the ones presented by traditional histories.
(2) The extent to which the whole world is shaped by graphics. There's a great anecdote in the Coda about how an early graphics pioneer could identify that some toothbrush, given its forms, was designed in AutoCAD vs. Alias. Basically: the affordances of certain graphical programs shape what is produced with them (duh), but more interestingly the extent to which basically all products we interact with today are produced with 3D simulation, or how basically all computer-generated product photography sits in this weird place between real and simulated. Basically: the objects that renders depict, are also now designed with CAD for production, and we might even think of the "true" form of, say, IKEA furniture, as the Solidworks models and renders. There's a lot of interesting play here about how renders sit in a weird place between simulation and reality that I thought was interesting.
Worth a read! I also just love the aesthetics of early graphics and geek over this history — I need to find somewhere in SF to 3D print a Utah Teapot or the Sutherland's beatle for my desk.
July 19, 2023
Choosing how many stars to give was really a challenge for me, I chose to go with 3-stars as these are marked as "liked it" instead of 4-stars ("really liked it").
I was mightily excited when hearing first about this book as a computer graphics researcher and found the topic intriguing. And though I did not love the book, I still enjoyed reading it.
Part of my disappointment probably comes down to my preconceived idea that this would not be restricted to very early investigations in computer graphics (i.e. the early 20th century up to 1970 or so) while omitting all of the more recent advances in computer graphics, even in the late 20th century or early 21st century.
It felt a bit like a history of the University of Utah and the chronicles of Ivan Sutherland.
But what really bothered me was the writing style, which was obtuse and unnecessarily complex, which made it really hard to read and I often felt that, to sound more sophisticated, sentences were constructed in weird ways and the vocabulary used felt like from a sociology book, not something science or tech-related.
I was mightily excited when hearing first about this book as a computer graphics researcher and found the topic intriguing. And though I did not love the book, I still enjoyed reading it.
Part of my disappointment probably comes down to my preconceived idea that this would not be restricted to very early investigations in computer graphics (i.e. the early 20th century up to 1970 or so) while omitting all of the more recent advances in computer graphics, even in the late 20th century or early 21st century.
It felt a bit like a history of the University of Utah and the chronicles of Ivan Sutherland.
But what really bothered me was the writing style, which was obtuse and unnecessarily complex, which made it really hard to read and I often felt that, to sound more sophisticated, sentences were constructed in weird ways and the vocabulary used felt like from a sociology book, not something science or tech-related.
June 27, 2024
A good introduction for people who want to think more seriously about what these funny computational devices actually are.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews