The Rhythm of Our Illusions
"Film, when displayed in cinematic form has an apparent look and feel -- a 'rhythm' if you will. The delivery of films on the Internet thus far has been lacking this 'rhythm of motion' that is inherent to a true cinema experience," Wood goes on to comment. "Without 'rhythm of motion' viewing steaming media on the Internet can be unpleasant. Our process virtually eliminates artifacts or what is commonly referred to as 'pixellation' and delivers a quality stream at lower bit rates."

In other words, by faithfully imitating the original 24fps or 30fps illusion rate of film or TV, it looks normal. It becomes an imitation of an illusion we're used to and have learned to love. Definitely life imitating art. Like World War II being fought in black and white. When we see contemporary color footage of the conflict, it unnerves us because the color values are straight out of the Wizard Of Oz. Even government films shot in color at the time were converted to black and white before release for that reason. We choose the illusion we're comfortable with, even if it's a imitation of the illusion.

New Media, New Tricks
But like we say, imitating may not be the only or the best thing this technology of illusion has to offer. It's easy to create a multiplicity of shapes in Flash to make profoundly complex animations in a fraction of time it took Disney to do it the analog way. Not many artists have gotten to that level, but Chris Casady has and animators should flock to him to learn how to do it. It's all on his site.

Further, with the joys of MPEG-4 at creators' fingertips, ways of transforming visuals into whole new experiences - rather like what electricity did for the guitar - or totally new creations (a la the synthesizer) are at hand. What we have is a whole new set of tools with which to creatively manipulate consciousness at a previously unknown level. It's again our opportunity to choose, then use, a new set of illusions.

It's all sitting inside that little box on your desk, though it came to you by a rather unlikely and circuitous route through the failings of earlier analog technology. How equally unlikely will be its product, when we really get our hands dirty with this?

Go ahead. Choose your illusion.