Untitled - witz cultural

254HYPERTEXT 3.0 defining feature of the simulation, the surgeon's choices. Finally, this simulationtakes the form of a game, although the player's professional investmentin the outcome produces an earnestness only occasionally associated withgame play.In conclusion, although computer games have something to tell us of relevanceto digital text and art, virtual reality, and educational simulations, theydo not seem closely enough related to hypertext to tell us much about it. Videogames have received their own field of study, and it is from this new disciplinethat we can expect insights about how they work and their social andpolitical implications.Although computers have affected cinema as dramatically asDigitizing the Movies: Interactive they have affected verbal text, at one crucial point-the relaversusMultiplied cinemation of each. medium to its audience-hypermedia and cinemaappear fundamentally opposed. Since hypertext requiresreader choice, it therefore fundamentally conceives of its audience, unlikethat for cinema, as an audience of one. This statement of course presupposesthat by "cinema" we want or expect it to remain a form intended for groupaudiences. Cinema, however, might divide into two forms, one remainingessentially identical to that now enjoyed in theaters, and another intended forsingle viewers. Given the financial success of both single-player computergames and DVD versions of films first shown in theaters, one very well couldfind a large audience for this second kind of virfual cinema.Even if we compare traditional theatrical cinema to hypertext, it revealsimportant points of convergence. First of all, computer technology has sochanged the ways we compose, edit, and even conceive of filmmaking that wecan now accurately speak of digital (or virfual) cinema in the same way thatwe speak of digital writing and digital textuality. Computers have affectedcinema in at least four ways, the first of which involves the near-universal useof digital technologies to edit footage produced by nondigital cinematic technology;this first form also includes the increasingly popular use of digital,rather than analogue, cameras to shoot film footage. The second effect ofdigitaltechnology on cinema involves using computer-manipulated images.Such digitally created imagery ranges from manipulating individual frames tocreating substantial sequences or even entire films with computer animation.Working on individual frames, for example, graphic artists employ softwarelike Photoshop to remove visual evidence ofthe safetywires that permit actorsto perform dangerous or othervrise impossible actions. These specially editedsections are then combined with nondigitally produced footage. Safety, con-