Any connection between the two spaces works to enforce their separateness – two relata cannot be connected unless they exist separately to one another to begin with.
The impossibility of existing together can be acknowledged when considering the relation
between the frame and viewing. As Friedberg writes, “the moment that the spectator becomes
aware of the frame, the joissance/pleasure in an image is lost, reduced to an awareness of the
enunciative presence of the apparatus.”80 As soon as the screen relatum is revealed in perception
as a frame, its transposition of space loses effect. The relation between a person and a ‘virtual’ space becomes a relation between a person and a material screen; perception is reoriented to the ‘real’. In so doing, the screen is revealed as connector, and the separateness of the two spaces becomes revealed along with the connection per se. The frame only works as a frame whilst it remains negated by the virtual space.
The description of the screen as a frame again suggests that it has no content of its own. The role of the screen as frame is to act as a ‘suture’81 – to transpose a space and stitch it in to the
‘real’. The event of stitching is recognised at the border of the introduced space, at the frame.
Importantly, this spatial disruption seems to conflict with and leverage off the screen—object in
a distinct way. The ‘virtual’ content is discussed as being of a higher ontological importance than the ‘real’ object. The virtual, as the primary relata, is the focus of the analysis. The materiality of the object itself is only important in the sense that it supports the virtual, and so the screen-as- relatum cannot appear in perception. As soon as the screen reveals itself as relatum, its support of the virtual space fails.
The ‘virtual’ also becomes split, with implications for understanding the screen. The ‘virtual’ can be othered by the screen object as ‘real’ material, in which case the ‘real’ is considered as the material realm and the ‘virtual’ as the immaterial. The line between the real and the
virtual then becomes a question of materiality. However, the ‘virtual’ can also be othered to the
‘real’ space, or the space to ‘this side’ of the screen, in which case the ‘real’ becomes a matter of embodied interaction, and the ‘virtual’ of a representational engagement. The line between the virtual and the real then becomes one of agency, of bodies interacting with and manipulating space.
80. Friedberg, The Virtual Window, 81.
81. Suture theory arose in the 1960s and described the importation of a the film’s space into the immediate spatiality of the viewer, particularly the disjunctions between shots and perspectives. Friedberg, The Virtual Window, 81.
Bridging dichotomies
Relata-based analyses of the screen present a series of problems, some of which were demonstrated in the discussions of the subject—object and real—virtual dichotomies above. The
screen’s unique position in raising these problems becomes particularly clear when considering
theories that attempt to bridge these dichotomies. Examining these bridging strategies can
reveal the commonalities that lie behind the differences. I would like to finish this section with a discussion of strategies used to bridge screen dichotomies, first for the subject and object, and
secondly for the virtual and real.
In the discussion of the subject and object above, the two relata had to be held apart in opposition whilst remaining connected by a relation of agency. This separation resulted in an analysis that
could only find the screen as agential in a de-localised sense, as a force of technology rather than a material instance. On the individual scale, screens were defined by their use, by being acted upon. The screen, in this case, formed a question about the constitution of the subject and
object. Peter-Paul Verbeek challenges such changes of scale in regards to technologies. Verbeek holds that, as technologies mediate both perception and behaviour, they play a critical role in
the determination of the subject. That is, “a technology does much more than realise the goal toward which it is put,” it shapes the actions and perceptions of those using it.83 Verbeek, in line
with Grosz, Coole and others, begins to remap agency as a relation between things rather than a property of the subject.84
Such an approach opens the possibility of mapping effects of individual screen forms on human behaviour and perception, similarly to the affordance framework, but then allowing the object to express these effects as agencies. The language of the affordance framework clearly preferences the primary relatum of the subject. Nevertheless, there is some subtle sense of agency attached
to the object in the way it affords, allows or communicates certain uses. It would not be difficult
to revise the language of the affordance framework to make this agency more accessible, though it might begin to threaten the parameters of the relata-based analysis. Verbeek suggests that
objects might “invite” and “inhibit” behaviours rather than simply afford them.171 Verbeek’s
active language might, however, be pushed further – perhaps individual screen objects could be persuasive, or even forceful, within individual relations.
83. Verbeek, What Things Do, 43.
84. Agency as a relation will be discussed more thoroughly in chapter two, along with the work of Coole and Grosz. 85. Verbeek, What Things Do, 171.
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Nicholas Nova, Katherine Miyake, Walton Chiu, and Nancy Kwon begin to provoke these sorts of object-based agencies in their project Curious Rituals,which catalogues behaviours developed with screen forms. These behaviours range from personal interactions with devices, such as
“thumb texting” and “the prayer reader,” through to group behaviours such as “the periscope.” Nova et al have two aims: to question the role of the body in the virtual; and to show that
behaviours aren’t always designed, but arise out of uninstructed interactions.86 In cataloguing
and naming a variety of everyday behaviours, Nova et al show various things as the common point of these actions. That is, people don’t intend these actions they undertake with screens, but there is something about bodies and devices that induces these common actions. Kirsty Best also suggests a repositioning of the affordance framework in her discussion of media on mobile
devices, saying that “a technology’s affordance is a relationship it has with its users, rather than a static trait.”87 In this respect, an affordance isn’t a property of the object per se, but something
that arises in interaction. Best uses this particularly relational view of affordances to examine people’s choices in using or not using the technological capabilities of their smartphones, showing that these uses are always contextualised within the (particularly social) worlds of the ‘user’. These studies start to break the dichotomy between the subject and the object by focusing on the object’s role in agency. They look with more focus at the unintended, and in so doing make a shift from a conception of agency that arises from the intentional subject toward a conception of agency that arises within a context, from between a subject, object and world. They explicitly look at the excess of the ‘for’ relation, that which slips outside of the intent of designer or user. Similar studies can be found in discussion of the real and virtual. The previous section found that the ideal of the frame, ontologically and materially, is its disappearance. If this sense of disappearance is pursued materially, allowing the frame to thin until almost invisible, the screen ceases to frame an introduced space and becomes instead a site for the virtual. As a site for the virtual, the role of the screen is to locate the virtual within the real. Introna and Ilharco discuss the screen as a mode of presentation, lending ‘presentation’ a spatiality in terms
of “making present” and “locating activity.” The screen makes things present, it locates them
within involvement, and in this way it sites the image. But it is unclear how, as a site, the screen
can locate both itself and the virtual. Bruno explores the material of the surface as “a form of dwelling” that “can become a site of screening and projection.” The surface is presented as a location, “a form of siting and a space for the materiality of media,” and in this sense it is acted upon by the virtual, “plastically activated, and sculpted”by the immaterial.88
86. Nicolas Nova, Katherine Miyake, Walton Chiu, and Nancy Kwon, Curious Rituals: Gestural Interaction in the Digital Everyday, accessed February 23, 2016, https://curiousrituals.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/curiousritualsbook.pdf; 7-9.
87. Kirsty Best, “When Mobiles Go Media,” 403. 88. Bruno, Surface, 94; 108; 101.
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Bruno is interested in the materiality of the screen, but takes this materiality in a specific way.
The screen is shown in her text as a sum or overlay of the two materialities – a site plus an
image – which together form a material surface. As Bruno writes, “this is why a prefer to speak
of surfaces rather than images: to experience how the visual manifests itself materially on the
surface of things, where time becomes material space.”89 Unlike Introna and Ilharco’s analysis,
which takes place before the virtual reaches the screen and is separate from the content of the image, Bruno’s analysis happens with and after the virtual, as this is, for her, where the two form a material entity. Before the image reaches the surface, the surface is a materially different entity – a wall, perhaps, or a façade or canvas. Once the image reaches the surface, it overlays its own (im)materiality, which creates the material screen. The site is thereby integral
to the materiality of the image – the screen arises as a confluence of site and image. The screen,
as a site, is not entirely displaced by the image. Instead, a new entity is created between the screen—object and the image.
Modes of projection, particularly cinema, provide one of the bases for Bruno’s establishment of the screen as a site. Changes in how images are projected indicate an increasing familiarity with the composite of virtual and real materials. The spatial organisation of the cinema theatre shows a distinct ordering of the ‘real’ in opposition to the ‘virtual’. Early cinemas reacted to the sense of distance introduced by the screen—as—barrier with attempts to ritualise the ‘journey’ between
two distinct places. Amir Ameri comments on these attempts, saying that “the two [spaces] have to be conceptually, and for that matter, spatially and architecturally kept apart.” Architectural
emphasis on the threshold, the exotic treatment of decoration in the theatre (or conversely, the
design of the theatre room as ‘void’), all attempt to place the experience of watching a film at “a marked experiential distance from reality.”90 A boundary is maintained between the film and
the ‘real’ using the cinema itself as a delineation between the introduced space and the space of everyday experience. In this sense, the architecture of the cinema acts as a frame that a person can step inside. The frame is echoed in this three-dimensional sense by the negation of
its materiality within – acoustic management, colour schemes, sight lines, comfort and etiquette
are all managed towards the disappearance of the cinema as a ‘place’.91 The architecture of the
cinema is a shell, a three-dimensional frame which contains an introduced space. 89. Bruno, Surface, 3.
90. Ameri, “Imaginary Placements,” 81; 82. Ameri notes that, with the introduction of sound, the edges of the screen could no longer be a suitable frame for the movie, as the experience of cinema filled the space acoustically. He positions the architecture of the cinema itself as fulfilling this role. Ameri, “Imaginary Placements,” 89.
91. The immobilisation of the body is often discussed as a technique that encourages immersion in the image. Friedberg quotes Robert Smithson in this regard: “going to the cinema results in an immobilisation of the body ... All one can do is look and listen. One forgets where one is sitting ... Impassive, mute, the viewer sits.” Friedberg The Virtual Window, 149. Ameri remarks that, after the introduction of sound to movies, cinema design was to intended to create “a featureless path to an imaginary destination” to support this experiential immersion. Ameri, “Imaginary Placements,” 89.
These strict boundaries between the virtual and the real are not, however, maintained in some
recent projection techniques. Three-dimensional projection mapping challenges the separation
of the real and virtual by dissolving the screen as plane. Projects that use projection mapping rely on the volume and texture of the object to create new materiality. Rather than overriding the empty plane of the screen with a planar image, projection mapping distorts the image in
response to the object it will fall on to, creating the overall effect of a single-context confluence
between material and immaterial.92
Particularly interesting in this regard are projects such as 1024 Architecture’s Perspective Lyrique, which projects on to the architectural façade of Théatre des Celestins in Lyon.93 The
building, which formed the screen in this installation, has a strong materiality as a static and
familiar object in the public environment. Layering onto the façade an image that specifically dissolves the building envelope questions this familiar materiality. The imagery stretches
and morphs the façade of the building into a singing face, which the public can then control by singing into a microphone. The ‘realness’ of the building is counteracted by the stretching image, which at the same time responds directly to the building. Once in its state as a face, the image also responds to people, drawing connections between their and the building’s actions
in space. Once the sequence is finished, the building returns, unharmed. The screen, then,
effectively ‘disappears’ once screening is no longer implemented. The suture of the virtual and
real is so effective here that it is difficult to say where the screen-as-relatum might exist. The
screen disappears into the building, becoming a particular expression of that building – wall— as—screen, façade—as—screen. The materiality of the thing remains with this ‘other’ – the
wall is hard and opaque whether or not it is catching projected imagery, and so hardness and opaqueness belong to the wall, not to the screen. But, following Bruno’s equation of the screen as site, the materiality of this other affects the material quality of the screen. The screen coincides
with the object, but the object exists outside of the screen condition.
The screen-as-site is an inversion of frame. The image is not ‘inside’ the frame, but acts as a skin, an outside.Bruno refers to this skin as a materiality that has “morph[ed] culturally, transmitting into another medium.”94
92. Anke Jakob; in “Light—Virtual Cloth and Digital Textile,” Textile 6 no.3 (2008): 254-260; discusses the interplay of material and immaterial surfaces in projection as “the employment of light in combination with material and texture influencing the shape and character of surfaces, garments, and buildings.”
93. 1024 Architecture, “Perspective Lyrique,” December 2010, http://www.1024architecture.net/en/2010/11/perspective-lyrique/.
94. Bruno, Surface, 7. The screen in Bruno’s analysis is a form of materialism in itself, an “innovative form of materiality that is light, diffuse, flexible and permeable.” Bruno, Surface, 5. Laura U. Marks likewise defines haptic visuality as a “translation… from one sense modality to another.” Marks, Touch, ix.
The issues raised in the discussion above are all based on the screen and its actions and meanings
to different contexts at different scales. Despite their potentially conflicting natures, they are
all indicative of screen-ness in some way and can, together, reveal something about the role of the screen-as-relata. This analysis began with a doubling of the screen to present as a relatum in two distinct ways: the object that opposes the space of the screen, and the object that opposes
the person. In the first case, the ‘object’ was understood as a physical, material residue and
discussed in terms of the virtual and the real. In the second case, the ‘object’ was that which stood against subjectivity, and the screen was discussed in terms of the object and subject. This chapter has repeatedly come across disappearance and negation as central to the screen— as—relatum. It is not, however, the screen that enacts this disappearance or negation, but the screen as relatum which disappears. Rather than any material property of the screen being put to use, it is its material disappearance – its condition as a frame or boundary – that is put to use. As a container, the role of the screen is to hold and express social forces such as attention, mores and community standards. As a material tool, the role of the screen is to be put to use by a person. As a barrier, the role of the screen is to separate; and as a frame, to connect. These roles hold the screen as a boundary between other things. Constructing the screen as a boundary causes a problem for understanding the screen as relatum because, as Martine notes,
“a boundary does not have the character of the thing it bounds any more than determinacy has the same character as particular determinations.”95
In finding the screen as a boundary, the screen relatum is hidden rather than disclosed. The
ontology being described is that of what arises in perception – the space or the person, not
the screen. For this reason, the screen is not ontologically accessible as relatum – it is defined
as a void, a line or an absence. The role of the screen as relatum is not its own role, but is an external force attributed to something else – the social, the intentionality of a person, the spatial, an image. The ontological basis of the screen, then, negates the screen-as-relatum. It is this something else which has relational value, and so the screen cannot appear as relatum.
Moreover, with the negation of the screen, the ontology of the screen is called into question – if
nothing other than the social or the spatial is seen, how can the screen appear in perception?