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The screen. As in computer screen, phone screen, tablet screen, smart watch screen. The first point of contact of virtualization.
I realized that I needed to start at the screen. I had all intentions of skipping this initial step – it would be obvious, I thought, that virtualization would take place within the world of screens and computers and technology. I figured that the substantive conversations about the concepts embedded within virtual action would outweigh the importance of the incredibly physical aspect of viewing the virtual. I realized that I was wrong.
All personal computers have screens. These screens act as our portals, our windows, into the world that lies within the computer. The screen is the window into the virtualized world. That means that a majority of my investigation has been conducted over and through screens. Though the screen is not essential for virtualization, it is the primary way we interact with and perceive it in our day to day lives. Therefore, I need to start with the screen.
Merleau-Ponty actually says something about screens. He is not talking about computer screens, but rather the silver screen – the movie screen. He observes that, in a movie, when a camera shot zooms into a character’s hand, so that it becomes the only object visible in the frame, we are forced to remember that the hand is that character’s hand instead of perceiving it as such. There is no perceptual action we can take to confirm that the hand being presented in the movie is in fact the character’s hand – there is no more perceptual information to be gained from what is being presented. If I move to the left, I will only have a left-perspective on the screen, and not a left-perspective on the character’s hand. We can only rely on our power of memory to remember the shot before of the character, and then remember that we have zoomed in on the character’s hand. This leads Merleau-Ponty to a fascinating conclusion; he says that a movie “screen has no horizons.” Horizons, much like a horizon line running behind a landscape, are what Merleau-Ponty calls the background framework which informs all of our perceptual understanding. In fact, horizons inform our entire embodied understanding, by being references to which we stand against in our perceptual, embodied lives. There are “spatial” horizons, “temporal” horizons, and so on, against which we can compare our existence, and against which our existence will stand off in some meaningful way. Just as a horizon line tells us how far away a tree is, or how the size of two trees compares, all horizons act as the framework for our being “in and toward the world.”
So, to say that the movie “screen has no horizons” is a bold claim – something about the nature of a movie projection eliminates the most basic of perceptual and embodied facts. Our embodiment is no longer relevant in our perception of the movie screen, nor our body’s relative position to the contents on the screen. All that our body can tell us is about the screen itself – how far away the screen is, what perspective one has on it, if it is clear or not, etc. The contents of the movie screen become a fixed point, which does not allow for any further perceptual discovery into its nature.
Merleau-Ponty is talking about a movie screen. The obvious question, then, is how does his idea hold up for other screens? How does a computer screen, a phone screen, a smart TV screen, compare in experience and quality to the original movie screen? That is to say, are all screens horizonless?
I believe the answer is surprising; no, they are not horizonless. It is still true that a change in perspective does not alter what is being presented on the screen – spatial horizons tell us nothing more about the contents of any screen, but only more about the screen itself. In that regard, I will stick with Merleau-Ponty.
What appears to be different is that today the screen acts not just as a projection of a movie, but as the window into the virtualized world. The virtualized world is radically different from the world of a film. It is not on rails, predetermined to have a certain outcome, written like a novel to be told in a particular order. The virtual world is not comprised of a series of camera shots, tied together with a linear narrative. Instead the virtualized world has its own unique structure, which the screen represents, and which is then presented to us. And that structure represents possibilities afforded the computer, represents potential for action. The screen is not something merely to be seen, but something to be acted upon, and its visual appearance signifies that fact.
I believe this potential contains a style of horizons. Take my own experience of my computer right now. I am writing this text within Microsoft Word. Behind it, I have an instance of Google Chrome open. I can see the Chrome window behind the Word window. And though a change in my physical perspective does not change my view on that Chrome window, I have the remarkable understanding that I have the possibility to shift my mediated presence from the Word window to the Chrome window. I have the ability to turn the representations I am given by the screen into objects which have the ability to be acted upon, like papers on a desk, into an arrangement which provides a comprehensible structure. The screen appears to hold a kind of horizonal structure, where my understanding of the representations on the screen being presented to me stand against one another, and against the background of the screen and of the virtual world, informing one another in action and potential. The virtual world is laid out with its own background structure, its own horizons that reach in and around every virtual and virtualized object, which unfold as they present themselves to us through the medium of a screen. The screen has a virtual-horizonal structure.
The key difference between these virtual-horizons and Merleau-Ponty’s spatial-horizons (which are traditionally employed in perception) is that, for our spatial sense, embodiment is essential. Merleau-Ponty observes that we all possess a “body schema,” or the total unity of our bodily senses and capacities, which is implicitly also a “theory of perception.” Through our body, and our body’s being in the world, we have the ability to place our perceptions against the spatial horizons we experience. As Merleau-Ponty definitively says, the “body is the subject of perception.” Not the mind, nor the eyes, but the body is the subject which perceives the world. It is not a mere ‘I’ which sees, but the entire body all at once through the “body schema.” Spatial horizons, then, are directly correlated to the body and how the body perceives – a change in the body’s location changes the body’s perspective by changing how space informs the body’s perception. That means that physicality itself, in bodies and space, is what directly informs perception through physical, spatial horizons.
But the virtual horizons I have identified within screens are not tied to anything physical. The screen does not present horizons to the body that the body can understand. To understand virtual horizons, the body must turn away from itself in the act of perceiving, leaving the body as nothing more than the singular sense of sight. It abandons its own physicality to engage with the screen and its virtual-horizonal structure, because virtuality itself has an entirely different nature from physical reality. We must learn these new horizons, as we learn other styles of perception and being in the world. But instead of leading us into our embodied existence, virtual horizons lead out of our body, into the screen and into the virtual world; into virtualization, and smack into the Absolute Divide.