In today’s technologically driven society people often find themselves over saturated with images, from the Internet to advertisements on the bus, visual images are everywhere. Nicholas Mirzoeff’s “Introduction: What is Visual Culture?” attempts to explain this postmodern visual world and the need to analyze the experience of living in a visual culture (1999). According to Mirzoeff virtual culture is “concerned with visual events in which information, meaning, or pleasure is sought by the consumer in an interface with visual technology” (p. 3). Individuals interpret visual images and then create meaning (p. 13). However, as the visualization of everyday life increases it does not mean we understand or believe what we are seeing (p. 2). This is because images are not reliable sources of information as manipulation to an image is very easy with technology. For example, a program such as Photoshop allows any user to edit or manipulate an image with great ease.
The high level of expertise in special effects and computer generated imagery now in practice has created a cinema where images are digitally manipulated to the point where the unreal is deemed realistic and audiences often do not question what they see. As Mirzoeff explains, “individuals are dazzled by the spectacle into a passive existence” (p. 27). Will images reach the level where audiences will no longer be able to differentiate between the real and unreal? It seems the television pilot Caprica (2009) faces this question.
Caprica offers a futuristic example of how visual images can be confused for reality. In Caprica, characters using a “holo-band” can enter a virtual reality program and interact with others in a virtual form of themselves. Thus the characters are the visual images and interact with other images. When Daniel Graystone loses his daughter Zoe in a terrorist attack he soon finds out she had made a digital copy of herself in the virtual holo-world. Fueled by grief Graystone wishes to see his daughter again, entering the holo-world he seeks out the virtual copy of Zoe. The copy of Zoe looks and has the same memories as the real Zoe. Zoe’s best friend Lacey talks to the virtual version of Zoe as if she is real. The spectacle of what the characters are seeing allows them to interpret the copy of Zoe as a real version. They are "dazzled". Graystone takes the reality that his daughter is dead and is a mere visual reality feature one step further. By believing the copy of Zoe as a realistic version, Graystone attempts to download the Zoe copy into the real world by using a robotic body, essentially bringing Zoe back to life. Here Caprica displays how a visual image can no longer be differentiated from reality.
As technology continues to advance it is difficult to speculate where it will take visual culture in the future. Caprica and films that are driven by digital effects display the necessity to remember the artificiality of the image and how easy it is to forget that what one is seeing is not reality. It is critical to be aware of the manipulation of images in order to create meaning from them. As Mirzoeff properly asks, “what are we to believe if seeing is no longer believing?” (p. 3).
