Digital 3D has become a core feature of the twenty-first-century visual
landscape. Yet 3D cinema is a contradictory media form: producing spaces
that are highly regimented and exhaustively detailed, it simultaneously
relies upon distortions of vision and space that are inherently strange.
Spaces Mapped and Monstrous explores the paradoxical nature of 3D
cinema to offer a critical analysis of an inescapable part of
contemporary culture. Considering 3D's distinctive visual qualities and
its connections to wider digital systems, Nick Jones situates the
production and exhibition of 3D cinema within a web of aesthetic,
technological, and historical contexts. He examines 3D's relationship
with computer interfaces, virtual reality, and digital networks as well
as tracing its lineage to predigital models of visual organization.
Jones emphasizes that 3D is not only a technology used in films but also
a tool for producing, controlling, and distorting space within systems
of surveillance, corporatization, and militarization. The book features
detailed analysis of a wide range of films--including Avatar (2009),
Goodbye to Language (2014), Love (2015), and Clash of the Titans
(2010)--demonstrating that 3D is not merely an augmentation of 2D cinema
but that it has its own unique properties. Spaces Mapped and Monstrous
brings together media archaeology, digital theory, and textual analysis
to provide a new account of the importance of 3D to visual culture
today.
