Magical History Tour – Special und Visual Effects

Are special effects — or their digital counterpart, visual effects — a marginal field in cinematographic art, things pulled from a bag of tricks of tinkerers, firework-makers and computer freaks? Or do they mark the culmination of artistic-creative imagination? Are they a generator of illusions continuously striving for perfection, the most artificial construction in a world that is already artificial in itself: cinema? A view back to the beginnings of cinema makes it clear that the history of film is also the history of the technological manipulation of images. Almost ninety years after Méliès' first "magical" films and after numerous innovations in the field of special effects, this cinematic branch has also experienced its digital revolution. The possibilities offered by so-called computer generated images (abbreviated CGIs) appear boundless regarding the translation of imagination and fantasy into moving images. Yet computers and their "analogue" predecessors not only generate past or future worlds and their inhabitants, but also complex visualizations of emotional, perceptive and mental worlds. Our selection offers initial insights into the varied world of special effects.