Slumber party notes for Hook&Loop Velcro TV

http://www.immersence.com/publications/2003-Mmorse-full.html

Since I haven't come across an essay that addresses the specific physical gesture to touch, rip, and displace certain parts of TV Flow, I found it most compatible to refer to Margaret Morse's essay "An Ontology of Everyday Distraction," which briefly proposes the notion of physically "sqeezing". She writes, "The representation of the copresence of multiple worlds in different modes on the television screen is achieved via division of the visual field into areas or via the representation of stacked places which can be tumbled or squeezed and which, in virtual terms, advance toward and retreat from the visual field of the viewer. (206-207). The issue of displacement, regarding the ability to move/shift velcro hook pieces around the velcro loop surface, is relevant to Morse's concern for "dislocation," when she goes writes "In a quite literal, physical sense, freeways, malls, and television are not truly 'places'." (199) The product of distancing bleeds into the interaction with TV FLow, while a TV show is projected onto the velcro surface. It invites the viewer to step out of the conventional mode of viewership and into a more tangible realm of interacting with the screen also in relation to TV as an ongoing/endless happenstance phrased by Morse quotes as "happening out there." (ibid) She also passes the hot pocket to John Ellis' " 'double distance' of television's complicity with the viewer against an 'outside world' represented as 'hostile or bizarre,' and the viewer's delegation of 'his or her look to the TV itself. Both means of distancing blink towards 'the opposition inside/outside,' which insulates the viewer from events seen by TV." (ibid i) Being able to move around the velcro pieces would also disrupt/cause creases on TV narratives since select portions of the TV show would be scene. It would then work to open up a space to create a montage or a sort of 'broken mirror effect' depending on select TV moving-images on display. The temporality of time, moving-image, (and perhaps identity with regard to TV as a metaphor of a mirror or vice-versa) could be re-evaluated or at least aroused in this way, through the concept of being able to re-arrange a TV show through hook velcro strips in varying sizes & shapes. Also, it would work to mess with the standard screen-ratio (what are they?) of TV sets in that each velcro strip varies in lenth and width. A part of the whole TV moving-image would be visible on velcro strips, while the rest of the parts are projected/invisible on a dead space of black loop velcro. There(fricken)fore, I hate to throw this in, but, "miniaturization" also becomes part of the hopscotch of critical concern, perhaps in the attempt to playfully control narrative and TV flow by substituting multiple sections of the moving-image with small velcro pieces intended to move around. Morse hollers, "Miniaturization is a process of interiorization, enclosure, and perfection, one in which the temporal dimensions of narrative or history are transformed into spatial ones, a plenitude of description of seemingly endless details." (211) The ability to physically engage with the moving-image and endless/seamless TV narratives requires a pliable medium and flat surface that would allow for a TV show projection to appear for the pleasure of ripping apart. So far, it seems that the hook & loop processings of velcro may work to play with this desire to touch, rip, and dislocate the flow of time and narrative taking place in that seemingly non-space.