Taking Shape

[Dave Monroe]

>From Scott Bukatman, Matters of Gravity: Special
Effects and Supermen in the 20th Century (Durham, NC:
Duke UP, 2006), Ch. 6, "Taking Shape: Morphing and the
Performance of Self," pp. 133-56 ...

If the nineteenth century dreamed of cinema, then the
twentieth was dreamingof morphing.  As with the trope
of virtual reality, morphing articulates and condenses
an array of philosophical positions and some specific
desire and anxieties.  Its place within the public and
critical imagination tells us plenty about fantasies
of disengagement and reengagement with historical as
well as technological realities.  Like virtual
reality, morphing enact many of the contradictory
impulses of contemporary culture.  It embodies
them--but it disembodies them even more.  Virtual
reality, through its construction of
computer-generated environments into which the
(properly augmented) subject could enter, promised a
total spatial plasticity tht exaggerated the spatial
reconstructions of earlier twentieth-century aesthetic
forms, especially cinema.  Morphing, a
computer-generated transformation of a photographic
base image, brought that level of imaginary mutability
to the body and self.  Again, like VR, it had its
precedents: its reshaping of perception and bodily
form recalls, say, surrealist collage or the atemporal
unfolded perspectives of cubism.
   Morphing is illusive but also deeply elusive: is
amorphousness resists recuperative attempts to nail it
down....  Around virtual reality and morphing, images
of reality, identity, and history are put up for grabs
.... mophing holds out the promise of endless
transformation and the opportunity to freely make,
unmake, and remake one's self.... (pp. 133-4)

http://www.dukeupress.edu/cgibin/forwardsql/search.cgi?template0=nomatch.htm&template2=books/book_detail_page.htm&user_id=1834&Bmain.item_option=1&Bmain.item=8868

PLASTIC

See also Imipolex G; Plasticman

Plasticman

206; Plastic Man was a cartoon character in the 1940s
who, through his ability to stretch himself into any
shape, fought crime; 314; 331; 752; [Image]; See also
comicbook/cartoon/fictional characters

Plasticity

249; "central canon: that chemists were no longer to
be at the mercy of Nature"; "virtuous triad of
Strength, Stability and Whiteness" 250; 

http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/gravity/alpha/p-q.html

Plastic

http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/gravity/extra/plastic.html

Plastic Man

http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/gravity/extra/plasticman.html

Imipolex G

242; used as insulation for rocket; a new plastic,
aromatic heterocyclic polymer, developed by in 1939. .
.by one L. Jamf for IG Farben" 249; details, 249-50;
"the company albatross" 261; "a fat file on" 283;
"what's haunting [Slothrop] now will prove to be the
smell of Imipolex G" 286; "a white knight, molded out
of plastic" 436; "Oneirine Jamf Imipolex A4" 464;
skinsuit at The Castle, 487; "This is Imipolex, the
material of the future." 488; Imipolectique, 490;
aromatic polyimide, 576; characteristics of, 699;
shroud of, 751; "the Imipolex shroud. Flotsam from his
childhood are rising through his attention" 754; See
also aromatic rings

Contributed by Peter Morris:
   The name Imipolex, in addition to being a pun
(imitation pole), obviously stems from a combination
of "imido" with a near-reversal of "explode", possibly
in analogy with Igelit (IG Farben's PVC) and Igamid
(IG Farben's nylon resin). IG Farben's polymers often
had alphabetical suffixes (Buna S, Igelit G, Igamid
A).

http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/gravity/alpha/i.html#imipolex


 
____________________________________________________________________________________
8:00? 8:25? 8:40? Find a flick in no time 
with the Yahoo! Search movie showtime shortcut.
http://tools.search.yahoo.com/shortcuts/#news