I stand accused, by at least one reader, of subscribing to mere faddishness in proposing that a 3D tsunami looms off the coast of visual culture. And of wasting time on such transient ephemera when I could write poems instead.
Major electronics companies are marketing home 3D systems. Major content distributors (ESPN, IMAX) are embracing 3D by making it available to their userbases. Major Hollywood studios are producing 3D movies that the public is turning into blockbusters (Avatar, Alice in Wonderland). Not to mention Bollywood, which is entering 3D production in a big way (starting with Vikram Bhatt’s horror thriller Haunted), as well as servicing the burgeoning demand in the west via the repurposing of existing movies. According to the Hindustan Times, “On December 7, Reliance MediaWorks Ltd announced a strategic alliance with LA-based In-Three to establish the world’s largest facility dedicated to the conversion of 2D films and videos into 3D, based in India.” (See Roshmila Bhattacharya’s March 30, 2010 report, “Bollywood hits button 3D.”)
Strikes me as possible that this may prove itself more than a passing fad. Yet even if it turns out to be just a blip on the screen, I’ll still consider it significant in the history of lens culture and visual culture that the pursuit of technologically viable 3D imaging systems and a supportive market for same has gone through yet another cycle.
Photography itself was of course a fad — until it wasn’t. Same goes for stereo sound, blue jeans and T-shirts as casual wear, and rock & roll. One function of cultural journalism (and I have that hat, among others, in my wardrobe) involves looking at fads in order to gauge the likelihood of their turning into trends, and from trends evolving into relatively permanent aspects of the cultural landscape.
"Dog with 3D glasses," photographer unknown, no date. Collection of A. D. Coleman.
Photographers used to wonder why, as far back as 1967, I wrote about computer technology and the ways in which it might impinge on lens-based imagery. Photo teachers couldn’t fathom why, in 1978, I cautioned the attendees at the Society for Photographic Education National Conference that digital imaging would shortly transform the medium itself, and the field of photo ed. (I gather they don’t find my attention to all that quite as puzzling anymore.)
Can’t teach some old dogs new tricks. So it doesn’t surprise me that some photographers today — especially photographers of the senior persuasion — would wonder why I’m bothering to ponder how a substantial shift to 3D in movies, television, gaming, and other previously 2D forms of kinetic imagery would affect the medium of 2D still photography. The simplest answer: I haven’t seen anyone else asking that question, and it interests me regardless of whether anyone else shares that view. Be that as it may, I’ll continue to weigh that prospect — while also writing poems, whenever one proposes itself. They’re not mutually exclusive activities.
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My correspondent J. P., in dismissing the possible advent of 3D, proposes that it’s old hat, merely the replay of a demonstrably failed experiment — been there, done that. I think he’s wrong. First and foremost because, as Heraclitus pointed out, “You cannot step into the same river twice.” As noted in an earlier post, this is the third cycle for 3D lens-based imaging, which is now getting tested on a visual culture substantially different from the last time around, with a significantly intensified and personalized relationship to the technologies of visual communication. So the previous trials don’t serve as reliable indicators of results this go-round. (Which is why social inquiry isn’t, and can never be, a science — no such thing as a repeatable experiment.)
Two types of 19th-century stereo viewers.
The second reason I disagree is that the two preceding cycles had outcomes that were hardly identical, and certainly not decisively negative. The first — the introduction of the stereoscope viewer and the stereo photograph, circa 1860 — was in fact wildly successful. As a source of visual entertainment and a vehicle for event reportage and education that 3D technology wasn’t really displaced until talking pictures and the picture press established themselves with the general public, circa 1930. Indeed, the Keystone View Company, which from 1892 on produced and distributed both stereoviews and stereoscopes, became the world’s largest stereographic company. Keystone’s production of consumer-end stereo viewers and cards continued until 1963. That confirms significant public appetite for the experience of 3D in relation to still imagery.
The second cycle started in the early 1950s, with 3D movies from Hollywood, the underlying technology (which had been around since the days of silent films) given new life by the necessity of movie houses competing for their audiences with television. Color movie film, the big screen, and the 3D effect all served as ways of providing a viewing experience that TV couldn’t. At one point there were 5,000 American theaters capable of showing 3-D movies; aside from Hollywood, 3-D movies were also produced in Germany, Great Britain, Japan, Mexico, and Hong Kong.
That surge of interest was driven by the film industry, dominated by kinetic images. Attempts at using 3D for the viewing and production of still images met with some success (the View-Master, the Stereo Realist camera), but nothing remotely comparable to the international market for stereoscopes and stereo views that preceded it. Technical problems with projection, coupled with viewer discomfort resulting from cheap 3D glasses, gave this cycle of 3D movie production a short life. And the photo industry’s first experiment with consumer-end 3D still photography faded with it, due in part to limited viewing/presentation options — though, as previously noted, the View-Master is with us today, as a kid’s toy.
Nimslo 3D camera, 1980s
In the interval we’ve had lenticular 3D; the Nimslo camera; and holography — none of which really rang the cherries of the culture, so I don’t consider them as constituting a phase or cycle, though they do indicate the persistence of the impulse toward 3D. (See the website of the New York Stereoscopic Society for some history.)
So the first cultural cycle of 3D photography had a long and successful run, terminated by the advent of new media: talkies, capable of providing a more engrossing sensory experience for entertainment (motion, sound) and, via the newsreel, more rapid dissemination of news; and the picture press, capable of providing reportage in depth more rapidly, and more inexpensively, than stereo views of world events.
In the second 3D cycle, the several industries involved failed to resolve assorted technical problems relating to the viewing experience and (in the case of 3D still imaging) an extremely narrow set of presentational formats that severely restricted the size of the audience, effectively defining it as a fringe amateur/hobbyist medium for family-circle enjoyment.
Digital imaging technologies potentially resolve the problems that lens-based 3D imaging encountered in both prior cycles. Distribution via theaters, television, and the internet can make 3D material no less available than its 2D counterpart. Convergence on the web of entertainment and news provides a vast audience for content of all kinds. To be sure, technical issues must get sorted out. At the moment, three formats of kinetic 3D compete: active, passive, and no-glasses. So the industry faces the recurrent struggle for market dominance of one or another technology.
But that’s no more a mark of faddishness than the contest between 8-track stereo vs. the tape cassette. Consumers committed to one or the other; the manufacturers duked it out. Both formats succumbed to the CD, which in turn may give way to the purely digital audio file downloaded to a media player. What consumers want, it turns out, is the best possible audio experience on the most portable playback device.
A. D. Coleman with 3D glasses, J. S. Bach with sunhat, July 6, 2011. Photo by A. D. Coleman.
Film and video propel this third phase of lens-based 3D imaging. That’s simply where the big money is. But I have no doubt that 3D still imaging for digital capture and display will ride those coattails. Just as stereophonic recording replaced monaural/”high fidelity,” 3D kinetic and still imaging may supplant their 2D predecessors. It could happen with surprising rapidity, even though it’s been a long time coming.
Participating in an American Society of Magazine Photographers panel titled “The Future of Photography: A New World” at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City on November 20, 1987 — a feature of that year’s PDN PhotoPlus Expo, as it happens — I made the following comment:
It seems to me that the direction of photography, the technological development of photography, has always been — there have always been several specific factors that we’ve always evolved towards. One is an increasing capacity to encode a greater amount of information, and dimensionality is surely information. Another is reproducibility, and [yet] another is accessibility — both technical accessibility and economic accessibility. Now, it seems to me that if some version of three-dimensional imagery fulfills those — economic and technological accessibility and reproducibility — then we will have holography. And once we do, then just as color supplanted black & white, just as the print on paper supplanted the daguerreotype, eventually three-dimensional imaging would supplant two-dimensional imaging. If those other factors are fulfilled. When that’s going to be? I’ve been prophesying the appearance of some version of this for years, and all I’m sure of at this point is that it’ll happen “in the future.”
That was almost a quarter of a century ago. I’d made that same prediction ten years earlier. Perhaps the conjunction of forces that I saw as necessary has arrived. If so, the future I described may lie just ahead.
“…My correspondent J. P., in dismissing the possible advent of 3D, proposes that it’s old hat, merely the replay of a demonstrably failed experiment”, now I’m a little surprised that you wrote that, because I never did, nor did I ever take anything out of context that you had written. In fact, if you re-read the comments, and there are not many which can be a sign of something, you will note that it was I that brought up the film Avatar, and there are many that have followed. Avatar was a monster at the box office and so was the ticket price.
What I have said, and shall say again that this is sales driven, and that companies have an agenda, they need to push there product-but in the middle or beginning of this economic crisis we are in-do I really want to watch this American government go down in 3-D. No.
I remember when journalist (like you) and photographers would criticize me for shooting with the Kodak DCS420 and the DCS460, they told me that the quality was not good-the images were bad. They had never seen the images or used the camera-it was a great camera-the mother of all digital cameras and today Kodak still makes the best sensor. Period. But, it is out of character for you to imply, “…especially photographers of the senior persuasion” hell, while you were writing of the latest silver print at AIPAD, I was totally digital. I worked for a company that could afford the future, not everyone does. At that time, both the NYT and Village Voice were using film-two companies that you know.
And, when you go to an event such as AIPAD-and you see what type of prints are selling, how they were printed, Epson & Canon are not seen often-a lightjet print-yes. Collectors are not gamblers, they buy quality and quality with a name.
I do agree with the above statement, “…So the first cultural cycle of 3D photography had a long and successful run” and has made a great visual contribution to the craft of photography. My argument is simple and quite basic. It’s a hostile environment out there, the marketing and advertising teams are going to need the public to get on board more-so than you or I, a government may default, school systems in chaos and more homelessness than in any point in our collective history. I try to look at the big picture and not in 3-D.
All quotation is, necessarily, out of context. But your comments on this subject certainly propose that “this is not a new idea — more a recycled idea,” and that the latest iterations of 3D constitute merely “a fashionable trend that everyone wants to cash in on,” so trivial that I’m wasting my valuable time — and presumably my readers’ time — in contemplating its implications. (“To be honest, I as others find it curious that you are writing about it (3-D) when your talent belongs in a poem.”) I disagree, obviously.
You continue to emphasize that this is “sales-driven, and that companies have an agenda, they need to push their product.” So what? That’s true of every product line made by every manufacturer since the beginning of business; one could say the same thing about the first goatherd who brought his extra cheese to the agora. You’re implying that somehow this impeaches the proposal that a 3D-everwhere environment looms ahead. These are not mutually exclusive ideas.
Sure, the economy’s deeply troubled. Moving to 3D (at least for home consumption) requires an investment in playback equipment that consumers may not be ready to make in sufficient numbers to subsidize the transition. That remains to be seen. But the consumer demand for the 3D experience is demonstrably there; millions of people ponied up the ticket prices for “Avatar,” etc. And the various industries involved stand prepared to service that demand.
I’ve no idea which journalists criticized you “for shooting with the Kodak DCS420 and the DCS460,” but I know I wasn’t among them.
Last October I was Nikon’s guest at the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta. While no 3D gear was shown or discussed there was at least 3 teams of film makers, some working with still cameras, shooting 3D coverage of the event for the Discovery Channel. The equipment needed, especially the motorized tripod rigs for shooting panning and tracking shots, was fascinating.
I suspect that in the near future someone will come up with a device that is a “Y” shape with lenses mounted on the ends of the arms and a single camera with a split field sensor at the base of the column or maybe the CMOS chips will also be up in the arms and feedback to a single recording It is likely NASA or the CIA / NSA already has such a device. The technology on the creation side is here. It will be combined with devices like the Kinnect and sensor equipped gloves It is the technology of how the imagery is to consumed easily and at a low cost and maintenance for consumers (including businesses) that will determine if this wave breaks as more than a swell. But if this wave doesn’t break as more than a limited phenomena the next one will crest.
I have my concerns about the levels of technology we increasingly need to make and in some cases experience art (and the holistic ecological costs) but we H. Sapien (sp?) are a malleable race.
Thanks!
Sorry but I still think 3D is essentially a gimmick regardless of the advances in technology. Having to carry and wear glasses to view art is a ridiculous idea and I think people are far more refined and demanding than to put up with that. I can see the effect being explored by some in still photography, but eventually the artists will move on. I don’t ever see 3D being essential to creating serious art. It’s best suited to light entertainment such as CGI-based movies and some TV.
People today do all kinds of things in order to view art. They go to strange and sometimes peculiar locations (sometimes traveling great distances to do so). They spend considerable amounts of money on tickets for some exhibitions and art events. They stand on line for hours waiting for those tickets, then waiting to get in to those shows and other events. They “put up” with all that, unrefined and undemanding sorts that they are, in order to have the opportunity for exposure to a remarkable range of sights, smells, sounds, even taste and touch experiences that today fall within the parameters of art.
Eyeglasses and sunglasses, worn even by those who don’t need prescription glasses, have become a commonplace personal accessory, carried around by millions already. Adding 3D capability to glasses doesn’t have to require viewers to carry around an extra pair of glasses, simply to make sure that the ones they do carry are 3D-capable.
We’ll see how your prediction plays out vs. my own, over the next few years.
Yes, you are correct, people have gone to great lengths to see art, but the vast majority see it in the usual way in a museum or gallery. Occasionally an artist will present their work in a novel way, but the majority still exhibit in the traditional format.
But what you are suggesting is a massive change in art itself. You are saying that somehow 2D art has always been lacking something and that is a third dimension. This is the part of the argument that I just can’t agree with you on.
It’s more than “occasional” today that artists present their work in novel ways, including ways that demand untraditional forms of audience participation in the process. It’s a commonplace, as familiarity with the range of contemporary art activity demonstrates.
The advent of 3D video will certainly effect changes in video art, as well as in other usages of video. Similarly, the presumably concurrent introduction of 3D still imaging would likely transform most usages of still photography — including what we broadly call “creative photography,” as well as commercial/applied usages of the medium (fashion, advertising, etc.).
I’ve neither said nor implied that “2D art has always been lacking something and that is a third dimension.” Neither a cave painting from Lascaux nor a Cezanne landscape can be said to “lack” 3D. And a Weston still life doesn’t “lack” 3D either. They use strategies available in their respective media to suggest and/or engage with dimensionality on a flat picture plane. By the same token, the film “Casablanca” doesn’t “lack” color, and the film “Modern Times” doesn’t “lack” recorded dialogue. However, the once-dominant forms of black & white films and silent films have become quite rare; making a new one now would be understood as striving for a special effect, an effect linked to a specific earlier period in the culture and in movie-making technology.