Summary

Cinema’s onscreen worlds have always borne an indexical bond to the real. What happens when computer-generated video game images usurp film as the predominant medium of visual world-making? How does one’s relation to onscreen heroes shift when we no longer identify with real bodies? Harun Farocki’s four-part Parallel I–IV (2012–14) takes up these questions, tracing how, in just over 30 years, video games have developed from two-dimensional schematics to photorealistic environments.