Media Surfaces - Incidental Media, BERG
I really love this idea of “ignorable screens”. It’s no longer a channel or container for which we either project through or travel into, but a flattened surface that instead enhances and is influenced by physical reality. It acts a supplement rather than a distraction to the real world. It encourages us not to focus all of our attention on the screen, but on the contrary, to ignore it.
At the same time it becomes a collective canvas that absorbs the ambient noise and visuals of the environment around it. We don’t enter into the screen. It becomes a flat surface for which things happen around it. In so doing, while the surfaces can still function to communicate certain kinds of information, they operate primarily as outputs as opposed to a space where we are constantly inputting ourselves.
It might sound as if this is some reversion to a less interactive form of media vis a vis television or film. However, both these prior media demanded your attention forcing you to engage and input yourself in a sort of feedback loop of adoption and response.
Incidental media on the other hand doesn’t expect or require anything it simply responds to its environment. There is no longer a “giving up of” the self to the screen but a “giving up of” the screen to individuals and its environment. The polarity is reversed where attention is focused on the physical reality rather than the screen itself.
