Screenology

While ‘screen’ is usually considered a word with a Nordic origin, its older and forgotten classical root shows that its semantic field is more curious than media archaeology commonly thinks. Above all, this proves the existence of a long-lasting connection between the screen and the act of seeing, and the very notion of spectacle in its broader sense. Such a different – Latin, Epicurean – etymology of ‘screen’ can put the idea of separation at the heart of the concept of spectacle. From this perspective, the value of a spectacle stems from a vision of difference – the act of spectating being both detached and detaching, as it enables the spectators to take themselves out of the picture, and thus to draw a morale from what they regard as other than themselves. If we bring this understanding of ‘screen’ to the field of film theory, we deal with an idea of experience that has less to do with the notion of engagement adopted by contemporary approaches focusing on affect, emotion, cognition (and neuroscience), and more to do with the disengagement of the spectator from whatever is represented, and even more to do with the added value that such disengagement brings forth.

If the medium of cinema is born of the addition of temporality to images, new trends in digital art such as
architectural mapping video projection, audiovisual (A/V) performance, and new forms of immersive
scenography are adding the spatial dimension to the moving image. The latest innovations in the area of digital
arts are the result of an acceleration of a trend that can be historically identified through the multiple
manifestations of universal expositions. Today’s digital explosion is in fact a consequence of the
democratization of instruments that control light, sound, and images through increasingly sophisticated
interfaces. Avant-garde artistic approaches, with their constant push toward the dematerialization of artwork,
have merged with scenographic spatialization technologies. This merger of worlds has led to new A/V
performance productions that reveal the emergence of a new language, namely that of audiovisual
spatialization. This language leverages the creative potential of new audiovisual instruments by combining
sound and light waves with the spatial component. This paper will address this new approach based on analysis
of multiple case studies.

La domanda che è il caso di porsi non è tanto quella sui motivi per i quali improvvisamente un termine come “schermo” avrebbe cominciato a significare anche l’opposto di quello che si pensa abbia voluto dire per secoli. Al contrario, bisogna chiedersi perché la connessione tra quei due opposti significati sia stata oggi rimossa, dimenticata. Il filtro teorico che un’archeologia della pratica schermica può fornire a una storia estesa dei media e dello spettacolo porta a ritrovare una fondamentale consustanzialità tra spettacolo visivo e distinzione, disincorporazione, discernimento. Cioè a legare l’esperienza spettacolare a una situazione non di ingaggio (corporale, affettivo), bensì di disingaggio spettatoriale, e ai valori aggiunti di questo disingaggio.

Through the Selfie Following its pronouncement as the 2013 word of the year, the selfie-the topic of this paper-became an object of much study and interrogation. Within the academy, a variety of disciplines and subjects attempted to understand this newly emergent practice and a swathe of literature, studies, explorations and analyses were published on the topic between 2014 and today. As a PhD researcher, I was obliged to read as much of it as possible and draw some conclusion on this topic that could still be seen as novel, unique or different. And while I do concede that I am not sure if I am there yet, I do feel that-after two years drowning in this topic-I have something which is at least interesting to say on the matter.

This article posits that the selfie is a screenic gesture which allows individuals to embody themselves within what Vivian Sobchack calls the ‘screen-sphere’: a reformulation of our definition of the screen which accounts for the ubiquity and mobility of contemporary screens that can no longer be regarded as an ‘“array” of discrete artefacts’ but instead regarded ‘as a structural and functional collectivity’. While Sobchack claims that our ‘lived-bodies cannot physically dwell in this new spatiality without special technologies’ such as VR equipment, I believe that the set of complex gestures which result in the selfie allow, in fact, for a type of embodied existence within the screen-sphere. In particular, it is grasping the device and viewing oneself in its ‘digital mirror’ that results in this complex gestural moment. I am following Flusser in my definition of gesture; that is, a production of meaning that is contained in some practised performance: a symbolic movement that at once both expresses and articulates meaning. I will draw upon Bo Burnham’s film Eighth Grade (2017) to provide an example of how this gestural relationship develops within the screen-sphere, in which a young protagonist engages with a variety of ‘screenic’ surfaces. Closely examining the main character’s selfie process, I will, first, reformulate Sobchack’s screen-sphere as a screenic topology that accounts for how screens arrange space; second, I will examine how gestural movements emerge within this topology; and finally, I will examine the role of the digital mirror, and how looking into the device consolidates this gesture.

Este artigo propõe uma análise investigativa acerca do desenvolvimento tecnológico, social e cultural dos ecrãs, no contexto da esfera artística e da esfera comunicacional, em particular o campo da vídeo-arte e da vídeo-instalação, o campo da semiótica do ecrã. Recuando no tempo e partindo de duas abordagens distintas, a genealogia do ecrã e a arqueologia do ecrã, propostas respetivamente por Lev Manovich e Erkki Huhtamo, procura-se entender com maior alcance o modo como a remediação destes dispositivos imagéticos proporcionou experimentações plurais ao nível da visualidade, da comunicação e da arte, ao longo dos tempos