Few ratchetees, including me, will have the necessary new video card enabling them to preview the full-motion version of the current state-of-the-art [outside of the proprietary big-box graphics houses, that is] in virtual character simulation for the PC. Nevertheless, these images on the Nvidia site demonstrate the heightened realism you will no doubt enjoy on your next computer.
Women now make up half the audience for video games, but complain that programmers are mostly guys with, well, guys eyes. Nvidia's incredible demo stills feature Dawn, a nubile offering who seems to be in her mid-twenties with a quietly sophisticated look, as though she had a couple of brilliant years in Silicon Valley before becoming a winged vixen. Dawn seems strategically targeted to aging gamers who have the necessary cash for a new video card that promises to bring her to life. [Boys in their teens with no credit card are advised to leave a link to this site casually on the desktop of dad's computer and start enthusing at the dinner table about your growing interest in Mathematica, a way-cool, but processor-hungry program that is really turning you on... to equations.]
Visual perception is most highly discerning when we look at human faces, since evolution requires that we read facial expressions instantly and with nuance. When it comes to the human visage, we can distinguish several thousand different salient feature combinations. So creating a synthetic, digitally generated character (popularly called avatars, syn-thespians or sims) is the grail. Nvidia's card draws individual frames rapidly, and in such a way that as we get closer figures progressively reveal more detail rather than breaking up into the blocky pixels typical of the keep-your-distance-please denizens of many contemporary videogames. Nvidia notes that "what truly sets [Dawn] apart from those cyborg computer characters that once passed for living creatures is skin--beautiful human skin. She is covered with an intricate skin shader that accounts for all the subtleties of human skin. This includes consideration of the oiliness of the skin surface, the amount of blood that runs just beneath the surface, and surface highlights as light hits her skin at glancing angles. In her enchanted world, it's unclear where fantasy ends and reality begins."
Honestly, I can't get beyond the skin myself, since the Nvidia vision that whooshes to fill my screen is such an unreconstructed blast of femme-flesh. Back in the '50's, White Rock Beverages captured male psyches by putting Psyche on their bottles [see left]. Their logo featured an apparently evergreen image of male desire, here pristine innocence in the form of a gossamer child-goddess crouching in availability, waiting, longing to have her gaze returned. Plus, of course, that near-bare chest.
In a world of digital interactivity, a half-century after the White Rock girl, Nvidia's Dawn isn't just waiting for the returned gaze. She's waiting to be brought to life, waiting to be possessed, waiting to be controlled. Because, of course, with the right video card, a few taps on the "right arrow" will no doubt cause her to scoot monitor-screen right while uttering a soft five-channel coo. She'll rise and approach on stroking the "up arrow." I'll leave the other arrows to your imagination, which is the point anyway. In a world of digital interactivity, spatial immersion, narrative participation, and first-person embodiment, the fantasy of possession, rather than the illusion of realism, seems to be having its day.
Now head back to the Nvidia site and read the three images of Dawn on the right in order, from top to bottom. The first is about looking as desire. The second, now closer, is about possession. And the third [I know I'm stretching here] is about being post-something--it's almost as if Dawn should be smoking a cigarette. But, after all, the guys at Nvidia aren't dumb; they know smoking would be out of character for a nymph[ette].
White Rock (WR)did introduce national topless advertising to the American public with the logo of Psyche at Nature's Mirror by the German professor Paul Thumann but they did it in "1893".
By the 1920's, the WR logo was the 7th most recognized. WR went on to dominate the soda water market ... they sold more then all other companies combined and WR almost became a generic term for club soda / sparkling water / seltzer (though each term has a slightly different meaning. White Rock was the only advertiser to use a topless logo for over 100 years. By the way one of the guys with glasses might notice that the "near-bare" chest is "bare".
The reason for for the bare breast was that it was a well known symbol of "purity" ... nothing was purer then mother's milk. In 1880-1900 companies were forced into branding and packaging their products (instead of shipping in bulk ie the "cracker or flour barrel) because of the gross adulturation of products in the market place. This packaging enabled companies to advertise branded products ... but how do you get the message of "purity guaranteed by the manufacturer" to the nearly 50% of the customers who were illiterate or read in a foreign language.
By the 1890"s drawings were added to advertising so companies that backed their logoed products (beer, rubber tires, water, soap, oats, silk clothing, whiskey, diamonds, furs, dyes, mattresses ...)began to use the "topless" drawing on product labels in their advertising, reaching and communicating internationally with all but the blind. The same thing was occuring world wide with purple glass bottles and the skull and cross bones to warn non-readers of poisoness contents.
Sorry about the spelling but no spell check in this system.
Bob Beckerer
Editor
White Rocking
Journal of the White Rock Collectors Association
Bridgeport, Connecticut, USA
Posted by: Bob Beckerer | 14 June 2005 at 11:59 PM