Convolute D: 3-D Imaging

The prominence of 3-D graphic design in the healthcare industry intrigued me in this quest for a working definition of modernity. The types of 3-D imagery are stereoscopic imaging (through stereo photography), virtual reality (through computers), or holography (through lasers). Basically, the goal of 3-D is to enhance imagery with the illusion of depth. The documents are then displayed either through 3-D viewers, anaglyph pictures (these require the sexy specs), or screening through digital stereo production.

Back in August of 2011, Clay Dillow blogged on POPSCI that "two MIT researchers... cracked some fundamental problems with high resolution 3-D imaging using a novel gelatinous interface and computer-vision algorithms that, in tandem, can easily and portably provide imaging resolutions that were previously only possible with large... expensive laboratory gear." As a result of this discovery, Dillow's article predicted that the "resulting high-quality, 3-D models can be manipulated on a computer screen to a variety of ends ranging from quality control to criminal forensics to dermatology."

2011 also saw the release of The Immortals, a mythological, big-budget film that director Tarsem Singh used as a platform for adapting 3-D technology to classic, Grecian story lines. Singh's work in The Immortals builds on the same larger-than-life sets. His skill in The Fall, similarly, was of crafting the story-within-a-story. Singh flirted with the idea that not only is, obviously, the plot derivative, but the ability of one to harness technology is only as adaptive as the film itself.

• Singh, along with other 3-D progenitors like James Cameron, have a certain skill in adapting new technology to recast what is commonly perceived as historicity.
• Historicity, as a philosophical unit, delves into the relation between teleology, temporality, and historiography.
• 3-D is the medium that depicts the historiography of modernity.