Screen Space Reconfigured is the first edited volume that critically and theoretically examines the many novel renderings of space brought to us by 21st century screens. Exploring key cases such as post-perspectival space, 3D, vertical framing, haptics, and layering, this volume takes stock of emerging forms of screen space and spatialities as they move from the margins to the centre of contemporary media practice. Recent years have seen a marked scholarly interest in spatial dimensions and conceptions of moving image culture, with some theorists claiming that a 'spatial turn' has taken place in media studies and screen practices alike. Yet this is the first book-length study dedicated to on-screen spatiality as such. Spanning mainstream cinema, experimental film, video art, mobile screens, and stadium entertainment, the volume includes contributions from such acclaimed authors as Giuliana Bruno and Tom Gunning as well as a younger generation of scholars.

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Through the conceptual framework of the haptic, this essay charts a striking motif in much recent video art: the co-presence of a hand touching the screen and a distinctly layered spatiality. Critically deploying various notions of the haptic culled from film and media theory and perceptual psychology, Sæther discusses Trisha Baga’s low-tech 3D video Flatlands (2010) and Victoria Fu’s immersive video installation Belle Captive I (2012) and expounds a contemporary haptic space that verges between planarity and volume, between the near and far, and that exceeds the frame to enfold us. As Sæther argues, the salience of this motif points to the split between human sense perception and the networked, computational operations of 21st-century media, and the attempt to grasp this split.

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