Microscopic CGI: Imaging Molecular Worlds

Abstract

This chapter examines the genetic imaginary of computer-generated imagery depicting microscopic entities or interior bodily spaces. Bull shows that this type of digital animation has a particularly long and prominent history on television, tracing its use in science documentaries such as Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, Ascent of Man, and The Human Body, and across the forensic crime drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and the hospital procedural House M.D. Coining the term ‘microscopic CGI’, Bull analyses the play with size and scale in such visual effects, arguing that the accentuation of smallness contributes to a cultural process of geneticisation. Finally, she considers what impact TV’s oppositional tendencies towards pedagogic simplicity and spectacular televisuality has had on microscopic CGI and its figuration of the DNA molecule.