Abstract
Contemporary visual culture is saturated with representations of violence and dystopia — a pattern reflected in today’s most popular media, from Stranger Things to Squid Game to Fortnite. This fascination with mediated violence and apocalyptic imagery reflects our need to simulate threats and process our ever-evolving anxieties. In this paper, I discuss how visual media uses Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI) to allow us to explore our fears of the difficult-to-imagine threats of climate collapse, pandemics, and societal decline in the digital age. As threats to human survival shift from tangible (e.g., war, famine) to abstract (e.g., climate change, AI), so too does our visual language — relying increasingly on CGI to represent the immaterial. This research contributes to the fields of media studies, cultural theory, and semiotics by analyzing how image-making technologies shape our depictions of horror and violence in entertainment. I will explore the relationship between visual simulation and existential imagination and discuss the concepts of morbid curiosity, negativity bias, and Threat Simulation Theory in an analysis of popular, contemporary CGI-based works. CGI is not only an aesthetic tool but a new language of symbols for visualizing contemporary fears, enabling us to collectively prepare for disaster and to experiment with post-human futures.
Presenters
Kyla Van BurenInstructor, Film Department, Santa Fe Community College, New Mexico, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2025 Special Focus—From Democratic Aesthetics to Digital Culture
KEYWORDS
Computer-Generated Imagery, The Image in Society, Creative and Cultural Technologies
