Abstrakt
The theoretical view on CGI animation has been closely connected to technological development that brings the possibility of generating completely new realities which are more or less based on known reality. Synthetic realism or hyperrealism usually lead attention to the mimetic abilities of computer-generated images.
According to the "myth of total animation" mimetic capacities of computer-generated images can be considered as the dominant aesthetic impulse. If the current technological possibilities have fulfilled the promise of a computer-generated image as perfect mimesis, would it signify a need for rearticulating the question to understand the aesthetic quality of virtual images from an overshadowed perspective? The skin of the virtual image has been understood as a product of certain tendencies in contemporary visual representation - with prioritization of recreation tangible qualities of objects.
Field of experimental CGI animation might propose an alternative view on a digital facade. For instance, Jon Rafman's Dream Journal (2016- 2017) offers nightmarish cosmos where the guiding principle seems relying on plasmatic possibilities of a virtual world whose unpredictable changeable essence brings up the horror potential of a digital image.
Therefore, we return to Eisenstein's concept of plasmaticness which contains something phenomenologically terrifying. The aesthetic principle of plasmaticism becomes the primary principle in an animated world where is nothing stable and certain, therefore everything is in state of potential fluidity.
This paper proposal resituates the term plasmaticism as a descriptor that awards definition of computer-generated imagery as a surface of a potential transformation. By exploring the digital surface that exceeds its mimetic characteristics, the research tries to see affective power in the materiality of virtual imagery.