The Third iDisplacement
On a footpath contained within thin, steel barriers, backed by gravel held loosely in the diamond-shaped gaps of a net, three devices were rested. Guide lights illuminated the path, shrouding the devices in a warm halo; the light source unseen in the photograph, its reflection was documented in a fractured bar of glowing yellow bulbs that bridged two of the devices. The bar angled into the dappled leaves and peeking blue sky suspended in the tablet and bit a sharp right angle of yellow into the black of the Android’s right corner.
Squarely in the corner created between the two lay another, its camera open. Whether its blurred sights were directed upwards towards an absent face or abruptly downwards into the ground was unclear. Was the pale blur a snippet of a gazing person or gravel against the lens? Was the foliage caught by the phone’s front camera or reflected in the peeling screen cover?
Either way, the unlocked screen and the open camera seemed to invite engagement, an assumption of self-as-subject. It seemed to wait for a you, for a click and command. For skin against glass, to press it more deeply, let it scan your face more completely. The “I” in “iPhone” suggests a prophetic iconicity: the promise of ever deeper person-device intertwinement.
So we experience the seduction of a better reflected and better recognized self; the simulation of a more delicate touch and of the interface dissolved. The iPhone 6s took force touch to 3D touch, refining its haptic feedback technology to be ever more subtle, more multidimensional. The X took this simulated interface transendence, this deeper, personal connection to and through the glass further, with facial recognition as the primary device by which to “unlock” the device.
Haptic: from the Greek haptikos, meaning “able to touch or grasp.” By the hand of Nemesis on behalf of Echo, Narcissus lost himself, fatally, out of infatuation with his own, untouchable reflection in another mirror-still black pool. To see the I in the device, and for the device to seemingly recognize and respond to the I, is perhaps too tidy, welcoming the Narcissan parable all-too neatly.
This post is part of a series that narrates nine iDisplacements implemented at the 2017 Venice Biennale. Follow the iDisplacements publication on Medium and/or the iDisplacements hashtag on Instagram to read and see the next instalments.
