Page 201 - Darko Štrajn, From Walter Benjamin to the End of Cinema: Identities, Illusion and Signification. Ljubljana: Educational Research Institute, 2017. Digital Library, Dissertationes, 29.
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ontology of the virtual
ident that what used to be cinema or film is now enfolded by visual media,
which this generation takes for granted. Still, this change is far from any
finished revolution: “The screen of a laptop computer – which itself opens
like a book – mimics the page, and Thumbelina still writes on the screen
with ten fingers, or with two thumbs on her smart phone” (Ibid, 23). In view
of cinema as the art of the age of mass culture, the screen could be related to
a (painted) picture frame. We cannot imagine exactly what would be a de-
liverance from the screen format, but “The new technologies are forcing us
to leave the spatial format implied by the book and the page” (Ibid: 24), and
I would add the “screen”. However, a result, which will mean transcending
displays, which “Thumbelinas” – for example smart phones – carry around
as if they were organs of their bodies, will depend on much more than just
technology. One should bear in mind that the effect of immediacy is at
work: “Thumbelinas” do not think much about technology, but they com-
municate with a multiplicity of “contents”, they live in a constant visual-
ly expanded inter-textuality, which includes even physical objects into the
field of subjectivity. Therefore, the above-mentioned transition from episte-
mology to ontology is inscribed into this movement. This is reflected in the
efforts to define, describe and understand what in some discourses acquires
a categorisation of “new reality”. For the time being, existing technology
has reached the level on which it causes the effect of immediacy. The leap,
which can be indicated for now, is a fundamental democratisation of, met-
aphorically speaking, film-making, which becomes a mode of life trans-
forming the very meaning of the individuality of human subjectivity. On-
tology and aesthetics merge in an inseparable assemblage.
199
ident that what used to be cinema or film is now enfolded by visual media,
which this generation takes for granted. Still, this change is far from any
finished revolution: “The screen of a laptop computer – which itself opens
like a book – mimics the page, and Thumbelina still writes on the screen
with ten fingers, or with two thumbs on her smart phone” (Ibid, 23). In view
of cinema as the art of the age of mass culture, the screen could be related to
a (painted) picture frame. We cannot imagine exactly what would be a de-
liverance from the screen format, but “The new technologies are forcing us
to leave the spatial format implied by the book and the page” (Ibid: 24), and
I would add the “screen”. However, a result, which will mean transcending
displays, which “Thumbelinas” – for example smart phones – carry around
as if they were organs of their bodies, will depend on much more than just
technology. One should bear in mind that the effect of immediacy is at
work: “Thumbelinas” do not think much about technology, but they com-
municate with a multiplicity of “contents”, they live in a constant visual-
ly expanded inter-textuality, which includes even physical objects into the
field of subjectivity. Therefore, the above-mentioned transition from episte-
mology to ontology is inscribed into this movement. This is reflected in the
efforts to define, describe and understand what in some discourses acquires
a categorisation of “new reality”. For the time being, existing technology
has reached the level on which it causes the effect of immediacy. The leap,
which can be indicated for now, is a fundamental democratisation of, met-
aphorically speaking, film-making, which becomes a mode of life trans-
forming the very meaning of the individuality of human subjectivity. On-
tology and aesthetics merge in an inseparable assemblage.
199
