Visualizing Maya

Pervasive animation in games, animation, films, numerous websites and stand-alone information interfaces, means that software increasingly influences how we imagine fictions, display information and interact with a digitally mediated world. Given its centrality in creating image, how can a 3D software package be made visible beyond the images seen in cinema, in games, commercials and visualizations? Is there such as thing as an interface language? This paper explores Autodesk ® Maya ® through a methodology based in visual studies, production culture studies, and science technology studies. The primary materials are moving images (games, films, animations, web sites), production culture materials, training manual and on-line tutorials, and interviews with software users. This diverse and extensive range of materials is approached through a focus on space. As the project remains a work-in-progress, a tentative conclusion is reached. The language of an interface is not something that can be straightforwardly read off the images of games, or fx sequence in movies, or animations. It emerges through software processes that make data legible and open to manipulability. It can be indirectly encountered as both a colonization of data by software users, and as a colonization of human users by data.