摘要：From pre-history cave art through the shadow puppetry of 300 BCE and onto motion pictures and digital convergence commentators have philosophised about the relationship between the screen and decision-making. Our entwinement with the screen, from Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, to a plethora of postulating in the wake of fMRI scanning, speaks of a complex interaction between humanity and the screen.Drawing on the critical social stance of social ecology the paper argues for a reappraisal of the role of the contemporary screen in an age of social and ecological degradation.Atop our spine sits a large brain that houses a very big visual cortex. Arguably, combined with our dexterity and bipedal stance, such a combination makes us what we are — none of which happened overnight. Day in and day out humanity’s entwinement with the screen has been and remains central to how our big brain perceives the world.Today, we increasingly rely on a personalised portable screen for the encyclopaedic information that was once accessed via a range of screens located in multiple locations: library, gallery, museum, cinema, television, etc. And while encyclopaedic information changes over time, as does screen technology, our entwinement with the screen remains fundamental.We have no way of changing what made us a big brained, bipedal animal with a large visual cortex and amazing dexterity; equally, we have no way of changing the fact that we are biologically programmed to mark-making and subsequently revel in gazing upon surfaces that humans have made marks upon — from rock art to digital art.
