Screenic (Re)orientations: Desktop, Tabletop, Tablet, Booklet, Touchscreen, Etc.

Abstract

This essay discusses the orientations of the screen both as work surface and as display surface by focusing on the shifts from and to the horizontal and vertical axes of the screenic space. To do so, we have collected a variety of examples, mainly media art installations but also films and mixed-media performances, which serve to reconstruct an ‘evolution of the desk’ and to retrieve a new gesturality. Balancing the producer’s and the viewer’s perspectives, we argue that it is no longer the function but the usage of a certain device that determines its position on either the vertical or the horizontal axis.