If the screen-as-relatum acts as a marker that splits the ‘virtual’ from the ’real’, then, it does so in the sense of creating perceptual distance. The object of the screen exists in ‘real’ space as material, and creates distance by means of its materiality. As the distance between the two sides of the screen increases, a person needs to project themselves further to retain a connection between the spaces. This is not a task undertaken by the screen, but one which is undertaken by a person, to counter the distancing effects of the screen. As perception is focused more on the spatial difference, the screen, in creating this distance, disappears.
The screen separates these spaces, but cannot be defined through them. As Martine notes, “the
boundary that separates… is intelligible only in relation to the separation it is taken to denote.
It is not itself something that has the definition of either of the terms that it stands between.”76
The boundary cannot be taken out of its context and retain its meaning as boundary. It must be a boundary between things. As a boundary, the screen must be between the real and the virtual. The ‘real’, then, refers to the surrounding material environment, and the ‘virtual’ to the distant space being drawn in to this environment through immaterial means. The screen—object is held in stasis between the two.
Suture: the frame
Having shown the screen to disappear as a barrier that separates spaces, I will now consider its role in connecting spaces. Although these two roles may seem a contradiction, both can be seen
in the definition of the screen.
75. Boothroyd, “Touch, Time and Technics,” 338-9. 76. Martine, Indeterminacy and Intelligibility, 55.
104
FILTER
SUTURE
In the sense that is acts as a barrier, the screen marks a difference in space: an ‘inside’, in which the subject dwells in the phenomenological sense, drawing things near; and an ‘outside’ from which this process is restricted. In other words, two sides are present when encountering a screen – this side, and that side, the side that is screened. A lattice may separate this side from
that side, but a smartphone brings that side to this side. Separation and connection are both modes of contextualising spaces.
Friedberg marks the condition of separation in the spatial device of the frame. She comments
that the screen’s materiality is encountered as the fixed frame, which marks the delineation of a moving ‘view’. This delineation results in “a separation- an ‘ontological cut’- between the material surface of the wall and the view contained within its aperture.”77 Similar ideas of
separation were encountered when discussing the boundary, and a similar rhetoric of inside and outside can be applied to the frame. However, the frame implies a different spatial relation. A barrier may not necessarily have perceivable edges, it presents in its ability to restrict the body. A frame, by contrast, is recognised in its edges – it is a circumscription, a complete bounding of planar space. The space bounded by the frame, in this sense, is held within the frame. When the screen appears as a frame, the virtual is seen in this frame. Two conflicting sense of ‘inside’
are presented by the screen as frame: the inside in which the person dwells (the ‘real’), and the inside of the contained space (the ‘virtual). The role of the frame is to contextualise these spaces, which both appear as an inside, and so both also correspondingly an outside.
In this second role, the frame acts as a fixed, ‘real’ context to an introduced ‘virtual’ space that
is otherwise discontiguous with its ‘real’ surroundings. Connolly likewise notes the role of the
screen-as-frame in galleries, noting that it might appear to “contain the image so that it is read ‘centripetally’, like a painting,” or else to “connect the image to the gallery space” introducing a blurring or “spilling over” of the introduced space into to the viewing space of the gallery.78 As
a point of separation, the screen contains the virtual inside itself; as a point of connection, it transposes new ‘outside’ spaces into the ‘inside’ of a person’s experience.
The frame’s contradictory division of inside and outside make the screen a device of inclusion
and exclusion. As Introna and Ilharco comment, the screen has “frames and edges that allow us to refer to that which is ‘on the screen’ as opposed to ‘off the screen’,” including and excluding
certain spatial possibilities.79 For this reason, the frame’s transposition can never be complete.
77. Friedberg, The Virtual Window, 5.
78. Maeve Connolly, The Place of Artists’ Cinema: Space, Site and Screen. (Bristol, UK: Intellect Books, 2009), 23-24. 79. Introna and Ilharco, “On the Meaning of Screens,” 68.
106
When a surface condition is activated in this way on visual planes, it changes our notion of what constitutes the support of the image and its way of siting a medium. I want to demonstrate that this new
form of materialism initiates a major transformation.
In surface encounters, novel dynamics are generated, including an innovative form of materiality that is light, diffuse, flexible and permeable.
Giuliana Bruno82
Is the virtual an immaterial realm, unable to be touched? Or does the virtual have the materiality of
the screen?
I can talk about the real as the space to my side of the screen, and the virtual as the space to the other. When I’m texting on a phone, the differences between the spaces are obvious. They are composed of different architectures and outcomes. I can type and send a message, but I can’t materially interact
with that space. I can’t use my body to pick up one
plane of text and place it in front of another.
But I can’t do this behind a lattice either. I recognise that I could, perhaps, shuffle things around if I could get through to that other side. But I can’t get
through, that action remains only a possibility. And if I did somehow get through, wouldn’t that side be my side, and this side the other side? Is the other side of the architectural screen also only a space of immaterial possibility?
Perhaps, instead, I can talk about the real, material object of the screen and the virtual, immaterial space it presents. These two are obviously antagonistic – the virtual image overwhelms the ‘real’ phone so that it disappears in perception, it becomes a frame. The virtual violently negates the material screen.
I hand my phone to a friend to show them a video.
If the image hijacks the material screen, what am I handing over? Is it the image that is having material effect in the hand of my friend; being turned about, swiped over and discussed like a tool? As the screen is touched, is the image touched also? Is she materially interacting with the virtual?