MEDIA TECH: Fake Enough to Fool Ya'; Real Enough to Scare

Back in the pre-digital-visual-media days audio replication was the goal. Anyone remember Is it live or is it Memorex? While I still believe full motion video CG isn't completely able to fool the eye (did anyone really believe Jar Jar Binks was real?), still images are another story. Alias (no, not the Jennifer Garner TV show, but the makers of Maya software) has a site that allows you to test your image discernment capabilities called Is it Fake or Foto? Your humble Hutchster scored an 8 out of 10 on the test. See if you can do any better.

- Hutch

UPDATE: Here's some additional thoughts from my very artistic, left-brained friend Dean K.:

Hi Dave,

I've been there before, and yes, it's amazing to see how critical the eye is, even with people that are not "experts." The thing is, had you taken the same test 30 years ago you would have gotten 0 out of 10 because you would have assumed it to be reality. Even after being told they were composed images you would not believe it, no matter how close you looked.

The problem it seems with artificial imaging, is that the more it advances toward fooling you, the harder it must work to fool a spectator whose perception advances at the same rate as our technology. How beautiful is humanity!

- Dean