[-empyre-] screens

[Simon Biggs]

What have you got in that baguette?


Sent from a mobile device, thus the brevity.

Simon Biggs
simon at littlepig.org.uk
s.biggs at ed.ac.uk
http://www.littlepig.org.uk

On 7 Jul 2012, at 19:10, Rob Myers <rob at robmyers.org> wrote:

On 07/07/2012 03:46 PM, Ian Bogost wrote:
> On Jul 7, 2012, at 5:50 AM, Simon Biggs wrote:
> 
>> I think the current debate, about types of screens, is off piste
>> from the original theme, which was to do with agency. Yes,
>> different types of screens will have different affects and effects.
>> But the key point was that we have moved from the more or less
>> passive screen (whether a blank surface and projector assembly or
>> an all in one CRT, plasma or LCD panel) to active and pervasive
>> screens. Screens that we interact with, that form our environment,
>> that control other devices - screens that actively mediate agency
>> and can, in some cases, act upon things without human involvement.
> 
> But, as has been said already, those devices are not screens. They
> are, most often, computers.

Computers are significantly correlated with screens at present. Televisions are now computers (or their thralls) following the death of analog broadcast and recording. Even cinemas are transitioning to digital projection with increasing speed.

> Many of which have screens of particular
> kinds. If we're ready to simply call all those things "screens" then
> I'm not sure why we wouldn't also call them automobiles or
> architecture or sandwiches.

I'm currently watching "Raiders Of The Lost Ark" on a baguette so I see your point.

Screens serve to conceal as well as present. Think of hospital screens (or the back wall of the cinema). In Simon's comment, the screens have served to conceal the computers. What the computers conceal probably has something to do with agency.

I'm not sure screens were ever passive though. Cinema was persuasive and broadcast TV showed news and opinion.

- Rob.
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