Specificity of Digital Media: The Medium of 3-D CGI and Other Media

Questions tackled within this paper deal with issues surrounding the concept of digital medium specificity. Within this text the intention is to establish the location and position of 3-D CGI as a creative and expressive mode of communication and to review relationships between the notion of medium, digital and 3-D CGI. In this regard, the paper reopens debates concerning the often problematic notion of how to address a medium habitually referred to as immaterial, i.e. the perceived immaterial nature of 3-D CGI and its apparent lack of tangible physical reference. This ‘digital’ issue is one that has remained an unyielding challenge within the quest to delineate to the properties for the digital, and has been the basis for many discussions where the topic is computer-based practice. By exploring and contrasting ideas presented by Alexander Galloway and Aylish Wood this paper asks if 3-D CGI can be framed as a mode of production, defined within its own set of parameters, when its associated nature (seemingly) lacks material embodiment?