The sensorimotor affection of the spectatorial body in the virtual image

from the possible to the potential

Abstract

In one of his texts, Steven Shaviro offers a stimulating analysis of the video Chris Cunningham shot for Björk's song All Is Full of Love. He shows how the singer transforms herself into a cyborg, and how this fantasy is replicated in another cyborg. In this way, the clip plays on the power of doubling in these machinic bodies turned desiring bodies. Faced with these post-organic mutations, Shaviro evokes the erotic life of machines, presupposing a new mode of existence that postulates the idea of a technological skin (affected and emotional). Yet these images are not just about transformation, but a fusion between the human and his machine-becoming. Shaviro takes up the question of desire and machine raised by Deleuze and Guattari in L’Anti-Oedipe, where there are as many living beings in the machine as there are machines in living beings. However, the organic metaphor of the filmic device suggests a process of interaction with the viewer, which Shaviro shows little interest in, focusing his gaze on the question of the double and its becoming-mutant. By proposing a phenomenological approach to the notions of the virtual and the possible – and pushing my reading of Bergson in this direction – I try to question the opposition of the actual/virtual pair in a fresh way. The epistemological framework for this article is situated at the crossroads of philosophy and media theory.  Using Cunningham’s video as a starting point, I’ll try to situate the notions of the virtual and the actual from a phenomenological point of view. In what ways does the virtuality of digital images convey intentions, that invite us to reconsider the way what we see the world?