Beyond the screen: Virtual Materialities

With the advent of new media technologies, and keeping in mind what I prefaced this essay with, let us now turn inwards from the real to the virtual. And it is here that we again return to the problem of the container. For the moment, let us restrict the discussion to the visual art image, but I will return to the wider problem for the museum shortly.

Since the earliest display of visual images, a frame has surrounded them. In many instances the frame has exercised it's own aesthetic devices over the image that the frame contains.

The problem is not limited or exclusive to the display of painting. In cinema, a similar situation occurs: the projected image is still bounded by a frame, which in this case is the edge of the screen. Such bounds continue to hold force in today's networked age: a Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer window bounds every web page on every computer, regardless of type, location or operating system. The frame virus has easily cross-mutated from the visual art image to the film screen and television set, and now to the computer display.

The frame presents a number of problems, operating simultaneously on many levels. These include:

The aesthetic —	the shear ugliness of the frame itself, icons, bars, clutter, etc. The fact that the web page designer has no control over such devices. The HTML standard and the capabilities of web browsers has significantly increased and evolved (rather than progressed), but while the designer has been afforded more and more control of what lies inside the frame, there is almost no control of the browser frame or its interface[3].
The political metaphor —	Microsoft or Netscape 'contains' everything on the web. While browsers at a technical level function to display third-party content, the frame and its associated interface elements serve the interests of the specific browser manufacturer. For example, clicking on the Navigator icon in the top right corner of all Netscape browsers takes the user to the Netscape page. No other company, individual, or page is given such privilege. Search buttons and bookmark/favourites lists link to companies with financial interests in the browser vendor (or visa-versa).
The irony of the frame —	a browser window, within a screen, that promises a utopia of information space — provided it could be adequately represented within the frame.