Parallel 1 by Harun Farocki

Included in Casey Reas’s course 50 Years of Software Artists at UCLA as a standout example of computer film, this 16-minute digital video explores the evolution of computer graphics within the larger four-part series Parallel, which examines the genre of computer animation. This segment traces the stylistic history from the simplistic horizontal and vertical lines of early 1980s video games to contemporary efforts toward photorealism. Farocki highlights how initial graphical limitations, once deemed inadequate, have progressively transformed to emulate the complexities of the real world, marking a significant shift in visual representation in digital media.