The Materialities of Maya: Making Sense of Object-Orientation

Abstract

The process of computer graphics modeling is often described as an inherently disembodied activity. At the popular level, this description often stems from the conflation of computer graphics and Virtual Reality—a term that (regrettably) has come to connote a seamless, three-dimensional, hyperrealistic "world" of computer graphics. Initially viewed as an unconstrained realm for sensory experimentation, Virtual Reality has signified for most critics a superficial doubling of surface reality that privileges visuality in such a way as to more strongly foster an eye-mind link that has little, if anything, to do with the particular materialities of human embodiment. As one of the leading advocates of this stance, Jonathan Crary has argued that "computer-aided design, synthetic holography, flight simulators, computer animation, robotic image recognition, ray tracing, texture mapping, motion control, virtual environment helmets, magnetic resonance imaging, and multispectral sensors are only a few of the techniques that are relocating vision to a plane severed from a human observer." 1 As a result of such diagnoses of digital media, Virtual Reality (VR) most commonly has been hailed as an antidote to embodiment and is often portrayed as a means for freeing perception (vision) from the constraints of the flesh, enabling experience to transcend the contingencies of the material.