Pitchmatcher is made from a microphone and a
speaker. It runs sound through a Fourier transform, breaking your voice up into buckets of different frequencies until one of them overflows. Once it’s drenched in a frequency, it’ll emit this frequency. It’s voice is your voice (but a little different). It represents you (but a little differently).
Mover is made from two lights, two wheels and a continuous rotation servo. It decides whether it’ll go forward or backwards, it’ll indicate a direction, and then it will move. Sometimes it lies though – it always moves the direction it decides, but sometimes it’ll indicate the opposite direction. What it tells you it’s going to do isn’t always what it does.
Colourmapper is made from an Liquid Crystal Display and an infrared sensor. It bounces light off things
and determines how far away they are. It maps this
distance to a red value, then it shows you this colour so you can see the distance too. If you’re looking at the LCD, chances are that the thing it’s bouncing light off is you. It’s showing you the distance created between you.
Touchbuzzer is made from touch-sensitive fabric and a vibration motor connected with a simple if-then code clause. If it feels you near it, it’ll make sure you feel it too; responding to your electrical pulses with it’s own. It’s all about the tactility of interaction, not visual display.
something can only be small in comparison to something larger. To describe a smartphone
without reference to its most common relation of encounter might be to quantify its size rather than qualify its scale. The ‘smallness’ of the thing would instead be described according to the dimensions of its sides, or to its overall volume. The quantification of a thing in this way
approaches the object as present-at-hand, as it is removed from its phenomenological context. The properties of relata are relational in the sense that they reference an assumed relation, but they are nevertheless taken as attributes or properties of the thing per se. That is, the relations into which the thing enters are assumed in the description of the relatum’s properties. The properties of the relata are seen as pre-existing the perceptual encounter, and only when these properties are encountered in perception do they form relations. It follows that the focus of analysis when looking at relata is on the relatum’s properties and the role they play in the assumed relation.
This basic definition of relata has two important impacts on what a relata-based analysis may be
able to reveal about ontology. Firstly, in taking the relata as intrinsically holding properties of an assumed relation, the thing becomes an extension of its relational contexts. When considering relations between people and objects, this context is a human one. For example, if a thing is small and graspable, it becomes mobile – able to be moved. The thing itself, however, is not mobile (nor small, nor graspable) without its relation to the human. In considering these factors as properties of the things per se, the thing becomes an incarnation of human need or desire.4
Looking at the relata stresses the context of use. The parameters of the description already assume a use relation – whether a screen is graspable, as a relatum, is dependent on its
suitability for use in-hand. In defining the parameters of the description, the context of the
thing has already partially determined what it is. The thing is already for something – some functional, material, social aim – as this is the basis by which the properties can be discovered.
The relata-based analysis of the screen requires a ‘for’ relation, and this relation is the basis of
the way that the screen appears in perception. Importantly for the analysis, though, this use relation is not constitutive of the screen itself, which must exist separately from the relation in order to enter in to a relation of use. I will return to the idea of the ‘for’ relation later in the chapter.
3. See appendices A through D for circuit diagrams and code.
4. Use, particularly, plays an important role in how things appear in perception. Heidegger identifies the use context as the primary ontological reality in ready-to-handedness: “that with which our every-day dealings proximally dwell is not the tools themselves… [but] primarily the work… The work bears with it that referential totality within which the equipment is encountered.” Heidegger,
A second observation is that relata-based analysis is most effective when considering pairs of relata. The simplest way to characterise the properties and roles of relata is in contrast to one another – in a relation of scale, one relata is large and the other small; in a relation of speed, one is fast and the other slow; and so on. The ‘othering’ of things in this manner is one of the
fundamental bases of relata. As Brian John Martine notes, “no determinate position of any kind can be marked out without an intelligible other.” For something to be what it is, there must
be something which it is not – an ‘other’ by which to differentiate it. The structure of the other
allows us to find “how things are different from one another while at the same time participating in a coherent whole.”5 This approach lends itself to dichotomisation. Describing the difference between relata is an effective way of qualifying their roles in the relation, and so the roles
recognised for each relata tend towards extremities.6
However, it is important to note here that any relatum’s pair is bound as much in sameness as it is in difference. For example, the positing of ‘black’ as the opposite of ‘white’ is only a useful differentiation because of the commonalities between the two. Saying instead that the opposite of white was green, or a potato, or an automobile (each of which are arguably more ‘different’ from white than black), is not a useful exercise as it does not allow us to understand what white is. A sensible opposition relies on a commonality between the two terms. Both white and black are the sum (and absence) of all colours depending on whether additive or subtractive colour systems are used. Importantly, their difference can only be understood because of this commonality. Black is chosen as an other to white because of what is already experienced of white. Although they are set up as reciprocal opposites, white is the term that has already taken
ontological priority – black is defined only in terms of what it can help us understand about white. Black, as an other, becomes part of “the logical constitution”of white.7
The sameness inherent in this relation of opposition is generally not made explicit. The relation between relata works in tension, as the relata oppose each other; but also in compression, as they are drawn together in commonality. The dichotomous pairings nested in screen ontology are important, then, not just in how the terms are held apart, but also their commonalities. Although the oppositions within these pairs of relata are interesting, these differences are, in many ways, pre-determined by how the opposition is constructed. What escapes these dichotomous relata is as useful in understanding the ontology of the screen as what is caught within them.
5. Martine, Indeterminacy and Intelligibility, 22; 39.
6. What is hot is not-cold, what is large is not-small and so on. Martine uses the example of water and fire in this respect. He first establishes that at least one not-water is needed to clarify what water is, and then shows that this not-water has to have a character of its own that enters in to the constitution of water itself. Martine, Indeterminacy and Intelligibility, 43-49. 7. Martine, Indeterminacy and Intelligibility, 47.
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The purpose of this chapter, then, is not to perform a relata-based analysis or to pose dichotomies
to describe the screen; but to find the slippage in those otherings and uses already posed. As
discussed in the previous section, it is not the relation of use itself which is of interest, nor the differences between the dichotomous pairings of the screen, but how these are constructed. This section has established that the fundamental assumption of this type of analysis is the occurrence of relata as pre-existing pairs of entities that hold properties. These properties allow the relata to enter into a relation. By focusing on these relata, the relation that is established is
a reflexive one, usually characterised by its impact on the relatum considered primary.8 In the
case of the person—screen relation, the primary relatum is the person. This relation is in both tension and compression, and implicitly reveals the role the screen plays for us.
The figure of the written analysis begins with two points corresponding to relata. On the broadest
level, these relata are a person and a screen. The diametric opposition of the termination points
arises from the figuring of the points as fixed and separate to the relation – one relatum acts
from one end of the axis toward the other, opposed by the force of the other. The properties of the relata are responsible for the strength and direction of the impact – from one relatum to the other. However, an incongruence is then presented, in that the properties of the relatum are already inherently relational. That is, before the opposition presents itself, a relation gives rise to their properties. To gain stronger access to the ontology of the screen, the opposition needs to be disturbed in order to reveal the assumptions of the relation. In the two-dimensional
figure of the axis, this move amounts to a cut, an incomplete form of severance of each relata
from their other. Care must be taken with this cut. The cut cannot sever the thing from relation entirely, or it will become present-at-hand, ceasing to be a relatum at all. The cut also cannot immerse the thing completely within the relation, or it will disappear from perception. But if the relatum begins to express itself as a function of the relation, there might be a discord produced; a slippage between the already-presumed relatum and the thing as it presents itself.
The intent of this chapter is to perform such a cut. Discursively, this will be done by identifying the relata nested within the person-screen interaction and the relational assumptions that
underlie them. I will perform, in this text, a series of logical ‘flips’ that occur while trying to keep
hold of the screen-as-relatum. A set of created objects, the Behaviour Boxes, will also work within this discursive structure to provoke slippage in the relational assumptions. The cut performed in this way is intended to draw out aspects of screenic ontology.
8. In Martine’s example of water and fire, fire (as heat) is used to account for what makes water different, but also for its internal differences – heat is responsible for water’s phase transitions between solid, liquid and gas. This is how it impacts the primary relatum of water. Martine, Indeterminacy and Intelligibility, 45.
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Sides and bottom, of which the jug consists and by which it stands, are not really what does the holding. But if the holding is done by the jug’s void, then the
potter who forms sides and bottom on his wheel
does not, strictly speaking, make the jug. He only shapes the clay. No—he shapes the void. For it, in it, and out of it, he forms the clay into the form. From
start to finish the potter takes hold of the impalpable void and brings it forth as the container in the shape of a containing vessel.
Heidegger, The Thing9
Designing to cut
Design often means drawing links between the properties of the designed thing and the intended impacts, or the impacts made. The impact belongs to the thing. As a designer, I can use understandings like formal aesthetics, gestalt or semiotics to connect
the things that I intend to the way that I make them.
Perhaps I might use repeating vertical elements to make a ‘tall’ space. Perhaps I might create a forced perspective by tapering columns toward each other to exaggerate visual effect. I could then, quite reliably,
say that anyone who walks into my tall space will
have their eye drawn upward, experiencing ‘tallness’ in their own comparative smallness.
A designer makes a form makes an effect. The thing is a vehicle for the designer’s intended experience. A flat relation is established: from designer, though thing, to impact. This relation has a direction and a type. The designer creates an impact, and relates to the thing to inscribe their intent. In the act of analysis, the user relates to the thing to derive an impact. The thing, always in the middle, always related to. Can design perform a cut between relata? Can it provoke or reveal slippage in these relational assumptions? The aim of such a design method would need to challenge links between aesthetic attributes and experiential outcomes. The causality of these links would need to be weakened. Behaviours and forms might be seen instead as provocateurs, drawing attention to the thing in interaction. The thing might become something not related to but
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How might such a thing be done? Could it steer away from the idea of use, of a thing for a purpose? Could it cut things up and remove them from their context, holding the relata apart so far that they sever from one another? Could it cross-code the
stacked dichotomies of the relata-based analysis to
disrupt its structure? Could it latch on to the thing for itself, the thing expressing its own role in the relation? Could it design with a screen, rather than
for a screen?
Relata that are opposed to one another at the same time as being connected. Two forces are at play: a force of opposition, which keeps the relata apart; and a force of attraction, which keeps the relata together. If a cut is performed, what will happen to the relata? Will they be flung apart, overwhelmed by the force of opposition? Or will they gravitate towards and collapse into one another? At what
point in this movement away or towards will the
Having established the parameters of the analysis and the aim of this chapter, this section will discuss two of the strongest dichotomies within discourse about screens. The most apparent relation between a person and a screen is that which concerns them directly as entities, discussed in terms of the subject and the object. There is also a wider context to this interaction
that specifically relates to the screen’s abilities to modify spatial relations. Spatiality becomes
particularly at issue within screen interactions. The second dichotomy discusses the presentation of this space in terms of the real and the virtual.
The subject and the object
I will begin by discussing the construction of the opposition between subject and object generally, before examining how this construction poses a problem for understanding the screen, introducing a split between the screen, as a universal; and the individual screen of experience.
An appropriate first step is to identify how the subject and object are held apart in their relation.
This relation is between a subject and an object that interact, so the properties of the relata
determine the characteristics of this interaction. The subject and the object are defined, in this
case, according to differences in the ways they can interact.
The difference between
The subject and the object are best considered in this context as a difference in the ability to act and, therefore, to form a relation of interaction. The inter-reliance of subjectivity and a capacity for intentful action have a strong establishment. Elizabeth Grosz, for example,
discusses subjectivity as being reliant on the capacity for action in terms of “autonomy, agency, and freedom,” which she believes have been “the central terms by which subjectivity has been understood in the twentieth century and beyond.”10 Diana Coole likewise marks the role of action in phenomenology, citing Uexkull’s understanding of life as “the opening of a field of action,” and
Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s focus on embodiment being built on an understanding that the body
“literally incarnates material capacities for agency.”11 Amy Allen cites Foucault and Arendt, similarly, as sharing “a central concern with the interrelationships among the concepts of power, subjectivity, and agency.” She remarks that “unfortunately, Foucault himself isn’t very
DICHOTOMISING THE SCREEN
10. Elizabeth Grosz, “Feminism, Materialism, and Freedom” in New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency and Politics ed. Dianna Coole and Samantha Frost (London: Duke University Press, 2010), 139.
11. Diana Coole, “Rethinking Agency: A Phenomenological Approach to embodiment and Agentic Capacities,” Political Studies 53 (2005): 103; 101
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careful with the distinction between subjectivity and agency; he tends to use the two terms
almost interchangeably.” Allen stresses the priority of the subject over agency, saying “it seems
clear to me that subjectivity is a precondition for agency; after all, one cannot have the ability or capacity to act without having the ability or capacity to deliberate, that is, without being a
thinking subject.”12 Whereas Grosz’s and Coole’s concerns lie primarily in displacing ideas of
freedom and agency from the subject (which they achieve by taking a relation-based rather than
relata-based analysis), Allen squarely states her position that agency, as the capacity to act, is
an intentional construct. It belongs to the ‘thinking subject,’ which pre-exists any act. Intentful action, according to this form of analysis, belongs to the subject, not the object. Importing this understanding to an analysis of the screen, however, introduces a problem.
According to the parameters of relata-based analyses, the person as subject and the screen as object each act in opposition to the other. To begin with, this presents two directions of