07/17/2026
What was the subject of my very first two published articles? Between 1984 and 1993, I worked in the emerging field of 3D computer animation — and it became the subject of these articles, which focused on photorealism in CG. To my knowledge, they were the first discussion of this new medium from a humanities and media theory perspective.
In “Assembling Reality: Myths of Computer Graphics” (Afterimage, 1992), I analyzed how photorealism in computer graphics differs fundamentally from realism in analog media such as photography and film. A photograph captures all of reality at once; a synthetic image assembles the world from different algorithms, each simulating a different phenomenon. As a result, synthetic realism is partial and uneven — some parts of the real are rendered convincingly while others lag far behind. With the CG technology of the early 1990s, you could simulate a face but not hair, metal but not cloth.
Thirty-five years later, this analysis has lost none of its force. Only the details change. While today almost everything can be visually simulated, not everything has the same precision. The underlying logic — reality assembled from separate algorithms, with uneven results — endures.
Realism has been a recurring theme throughout the history of media. Photography kept advancing — faster exposures, finer detail, black and white giving way to color. Cinema followed the same path, adding synchronized sound at the turn of the 1930s. Video games went from minimal sprites to today’s atmospheric, highly detailed worlds. And over the last few years, AI image and video generation has taken up the same quest — each new model chasing more convincing faces, light, and motion. The pursuit of the “real” keeps returning in new technical form.
PDFs of both articles:
https://manovich.net/index.php/projects/real-wars-esthetics-and-professionalism-in-computer-animation
https://zurl.co/pc6ZS
