Let’s assume, the Digital Habitat is one Galaxy. The physical habitat is another Galaxy. Now, all we know is, there are interfaces and „touchpoints“ between these Galaxies, there are blurred lines, right? In the very analogue film, "Illibatezza – Chastity”, by Rossellini, there is a guy (Joe) who tries to come into physical contact with the interface of the medium, raising new questions about the touchable screens and tactile experiences. In a different yet similar fashion, the segment "Illibatezza – Chastity” and the Cronenberg movie „Videodrome“ analyze the foundation of cinematic spectatorship. In both works, the focus shifts from eye to body, retina to skin, perception to sensation, vision to participation, and transcendence to embodiment. In "Illibatezza – Chastity”, a film projection engages us with an interfaciality that is hardly limited to the common notion of self-reflexivity. This time cinema does not address the subject’s passive eye, but incites him to become an active body, complicating subjectivity, the embodied agency of „entering“ an imaginary space, just like in a VR scenario. This classical account, a modernist version of Plato’s Cave allegory, however, presumes the spectator’s hyper-perceptive state, which is usually combined with an immobilized physical state. But what if the spectator stands up from his couch and tries to touch the projection? Paradoxical enough, this extreme approach to the screen puts in motion the Imaginary as the unconscious adhesion to the projection, reviving the paralyzed materiality of the body and the physical interface. However, this move from watching to touch cannot accomplish a real touch of the projected body because even a regained corporeality only contacts the apparatus, just like in Cronenberg’s Videodrome. This act would be tantamount to trying to make physical love to a ghost. Max in Videodrome and Joe in "Illibatezza – Chastity” experience the apparatus in flesh and blood: a tactile disclosure of the material structure of our projections - the transcendental subject has usually no ideological permission to do just that. Joe’s assimilation to the image becomes dissimilation when acting out turns into action just as the audience’s crying in sad movies reawakens their being physically situated in a theater. Through his bodily contact with the bodiless image, Joe must learn that the projection is now literally producing a blind spot through his body. Joe has to learn that his own projection is the guarantee that the projected object will be forever out of reach. The Digital Habitat stretches the concept of „projection“ a bit further. In video Games and in VR scenarios, we are taking our bodies with us. Our movements are projected onto a virtual body. Curiously enough, this does not „move“ us emotionally. Why? Because it does not tell us what to feel. As movie spectators, we can feel something, we can be „moved“ in a very pleasant way, precisely because we leave our body behind, we do not assume that we are bodies. As soon as we notice our own body, the necessary illusion is „broken“. That means, the Digital Habitat, such as VR, will have much more impact on „real, physical“ life than we may think. Imagine something of the kind that Franz Kafka describes in his „Penal Colony“: an elaborate torture and execution device that carves the sentence of the condemned prisoner on his skin before letting him die.
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AuthorThomas Behrens Visual Communication is not only taking part in the digital transformation - actively and passively - he will also reflect on it. Hence the blog. Archives
January 2021
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