Chistyakova, V. O. Analysis of the Screen in Terms of Mediality (Perspectives of Screen Studies)

Abstract: The subject under research is the screen as a form-making principle in culture as well as particular forms of screen art. Even though there is a great variety of modern screens, gigantic and small, private and public, interactive and linear, dynamic and static ones, we can still easily recognize the screen form as it is. It is clearly distinctive from other visual phenomena. The screen can be recognized based on several features: it has the frame (visible border between the screen and other space), surface, it demonstrates the dialectics of the hidden and discovered and has the polyscreen feature. The latter takes us to a completely new of the analysis of screen, i.e. in terms of mediality. The screen is a particular case of mediality in which regard we can only partly reconstruct the ‘movement’ given at the moment of ‘change’. In her research the author uses the approaches of media studies as well as screen studies or screenology viewing screen as a medium, i.e. the combination of many conditions related to the features of a particular data storage device (but not limited to them) allowing to make information visible. The novelty of the research is in the fact that the author is the first one to apply to the concept of mediality to the phenomenon of screen. The author’s approach allows to explain the vision effect when the image is rendered through a particular screen. The author also raises a debating question about the material nature of medium (metaxu) and the relation between the material and mediality. The author has made a great contribution to the development of the performance concept of mediality (in other words, the concept of mediality as a practice). It is concluded that the screen is a particular case of mediality. It has no ontology or chronological certainty. In other words, the screen does not exist but ‘being established’.

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