Leaking at the Edges

Abstract

This chapter continues thinking about the screen via its boundaries, where, despite strong associations of protection and partition, screens are also shown to be read as subject to rupture, breach and violation, whose violence, moreover, may be presented in gendered terms. Breaches of the screen also imbricate the virtual and the actual in (i) exposing the factual realness of the actual by the fictional realness of the virtual; and (ii) spillover, or “leakage,” of the virtual into the actual. With mobile and interactive media, screen boundaries diminish further as parties become virtually co-located and, as virtual worlds grow deeper and more complex, share them with algorithms. As demarcations between actual and virtual realities, screen boundaries grow increasingly unstable and fragile.