Screen Spaces en Nocturne 360 1 y 2

“The screen has evolved from a passive frame through which reality is mediated to an active interface that shapes reality itself.” — Francesco Casetti

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Does a screen really exist? Or does it only exist because we’ve agreed upon its existence? Screens are largely built and completed by the observer: a screen can be a storytelling device, but also a divider, a camouflage or something to hide in. It can bring together an unlimited amount of locations and worlds, both imaginary and real, old and new, historical and futuristic. For MUTEK Edition XX, celebrating its 20th run, the artists Boris Acket, Zalán Szakács, and Corey Schneider build on the philosophical ideas of the screen and the history of its development to create a scenography for the two-night electronic music programme Nocturne A and B.

Over the past 20 years, the evolution of new media art has shown fascinating trends, particularly in the use of screens. When MUTEK MX celebrated its inaugural edition in 2003, the festival was primarily built upon electronic music and synchronous performances of sound and image projections. What followed was a period defined by democratization: the hardware and software to synchronize motion, light and movement, became more accessible to a broader group of artists over time. Today, the media art landscape is shifting away from two-dimensional projections, evolving into three-dimensional spaces. Rather than being a projection material, the screen becomes a tool for creating material and immaterial spaces.

This text expands on the conceptual and material vantage points of the work Screen Spaces by Boris Acket, Zalán Szakács, and Corey Schneider. First, by diving into the history of a broad understanding of what a screen is and can be, and second, by diving into the interrelations within the scenography at MUTEK.

Figure 1: Reversed chronology of the screen, starting from contemporary LED screens back to room dividers from 600 A.D.

1. Tracing the history of the screen from fireplaces to pixels

This project was partly inspired by Zalán Szakács’ media archaeological research into the history of screens. In the following few paragraphs, we’d like to summarise some important points of this research which have been instrumental to our collaboration.

Nowadays, we are surrounded by our screen devices: working on our laptops, calling and browsing on our iPhones, and following GPS on our daily commute. Screens have become an essential part of our daily life, and one might even say, an extension of our body. But, if we examine the meaning and the function of screens in a historical context, we discover that screens have been something more and other than just optical devices. The developments of the screen show a non-linear process of various manifestations, including its spatial function, display role, and psychological character.

Screen as a spatial function

The history of screens started in the 7th century when screens were used as spatial devices for separation, filtering, sheltering, camouflaging, masking or protecting in spatial contexts. Some examples of this function include Chinese room dividing screens decorated with illusionary natural landscapes (7th c.); Christian carved rood screens that separated the chancel and nave in medieval churches (13th c.); Orthodox iconostasis wall screens including religious paintings (14th century); camouflage hunting screens misleading the wild animals during the hunt (17th c.); fire screens, which were placed in front of the fireplace to protect from the heat (17th c.), and hand screens that were used to protect from the sun (17 c.). Next to functional aspects, these objects were heavily decorated – creating a portal to other ‘fictional’ dimensions and landscapes.

Screen as a display function

In the 19th century, the role of the screen expanded beyond static, two-dimensional objects, introducing a new kind of screen experience. While earlier screens featured painted, carved, or drawn images, the first use of screens to display changing, dynamic imagery emerged during the phantasmagoria. These theatrical performances used ‘magic lanterns’—devices using the light of oil lamps to project images drawn onto glass plates—to project ghostly images onto screens made from semi-transparent textiles or even smoke. In these shows, the screen was no longer just a surface but became part of the spectacle that contributed to the sense of illusion and immersion.

With their phantasmagoria performances, the projectionists promised purely scientific experiments but actually created illusions of pre-romantic horror in which they evoked dialogues between the living and the dead. By positioning the projection apparatus on wheels and moving it towards the audience, it appeared as if the phantasmagoric ghosts were flying closer and closer to the frightened public. Here, the function of the screen was also that of a wall divider, separating the space into two parts: one where the spectators were located and one where the projection apparatus, the magic lantern, was operating. Because the spectators could not see the technology and understand how the spectacle was constructed, they experienced the horror stories deeply.

The screen is then part of a configuration of other aspects, which in media theory and film studies is called the dispositif. This concept includes the technical, spatial, and social arrangements that frame how a spectator interacts with a medium. It involves not just the physical apparatus (such as the projector or, later, the camera) but also the relationships between the audience, the space of viewing, and the ways in which meaning is constructed through that interaction.

This complex relationship between the apparatus, the space, and the audience created a new form of screen experience and a new way of seeing: the images breaking out of the screen and entering real life. The projections of phantasmagoria seemed so real that the visitors wanted to run out of the projection space, similar to the stories of the first instance of cinema, the screening of The Arrival of the Train (1896) by the Lumière brothers. Here the realistic perspective of the approaching train was so convincing that it is said some spectators feared it would burst into the theater. Beyond purely displaying moving imagery, cinema also has the function of being a window into another world, giving the audience the sense of being an observer looking through the screen into a narrative or visual space.

Screen as a psychological device

Beyond the spatial and display functions, the screen has also been a medium for hallucinations. In the 1960s, a group of artists and filmmakers sought to push the boundaries of conventional cinema. Expanded Cinema pioneers like Anthony McCall and Lis Rhodes aimed to strip cinema back to its core—moving light. By projecting white light into a space and introducing smoke as a makeshift screen, they created sculptural, immaterial environments shaped by light. This cinematic experience went beyond the traditional one-way interaction between the audience and the screen, as spectators could move freely through the space, engaging with the projections in a multimodal way. The flickering light produced after images in the brain, effectively transforming the human eye into its own screen. This resulted in a hallucinatory experience, where spectators' consciousness seemed to expand into another dimension.

2. A configuration of screens at MUTEK 2024

Today, screens have moved beyond the traditional formats; technology is not used as an object but rather as an instrument to create atmospheres and spaces that are on the border between material and immaterial. The complexity of the notion of the screen is explored through the integration of the artworks Topia by Zalán Szakács, Einder by Boris Acket, connected by the composition by Corey Schneider. These works challenge the perception of the spectators and, by doing so, contribute to reflections on technologies and image cultures. The timeline of the scenography at MUTEK manifests as an abstraction of the reversed chronology of the development of the screen. Over two nights, the digital screen collides with the physical screen and the rooms will traverse the path from immateriality to materiality, exploring illusions and perceptions in various media.

The immaterial screen: Topia

Topia is a light installation inspired by the historical development of the ‘screen’. Set in a stage-like space, the work uses the sculptural character of light by projecting it onto misty haze, perceptually creating an immaterial wall. Whereas the screen in the cinema disappears as the spectators are immersed in the narrative, this work brings the medium of the screen to the forefront and highlights the technique instead of the narrative. As such, it re-establishes the spatial function of the screen in an era in which its display function (read: information overload) is dominant. The perceptual ‘wall’ that appears in the space dynamically re-organises the environment, closing off and opening up the space. The curtain-like quality of the light wall highlights the flatness of the ‘screen,’ evoking the appearance of today's LED screens in an unfamiliar way.

“In my practice, I like to create works that are historically informed, but they don’t have to be a literal translation of the theory. Instead, my pieces evoke particular experiences through light, space, and sound that are interpreted and understood on an abstract level, triggering spectators in different ways.” — Zalán Szakács

The material screen: Einder

On the second night of Screen Spaces, two of the light curtains will be accompanied by Boris Acket’s signature fabric pieces titled Einder. The original series explores the juxtaposition between control and surrender, the natural and the synthetic. In the context of Screen Spaces the relationship between the digital and the physical is central, bridging the gap between screenworlds and reality. Einder features a large, semi-transparent textile piece manipulated by wind, its gentle, wave-like movements maintaining an element of unpredictability—no two waves are ever the same. Like Topia, Einder emphasises the spatial quality of screens in an ambiguous way; viewers can look through the fabric, creating an almost ghostly presence. The movement of the screen then also produces its content, appearing as a digital animation, a wink to contemporary image culture.

“People often tell me that the fabric pieces I put on look like renders. I always find this such a fascinating remark. Without screens, without rendering techniques,fabric would just be fabric, and light would simply be light. Immaterial worlds have become so intertwined with our everyday existence that real-life things sometimes seem to resemble more of the digital than the real. In the case of my Einder pieces, it sometimes seems like they become like Hypernature; hypernatural beings interacting with our real-life world.”— Boris Acket

Programming immaterial and material screens: tools and instrumentalisation

How do you combine a set of discrete technologies into a single instrument that transcends its components? This question is central to Corey Schneider’s practice. In Screen Spaces, Schneider’s instrument brings the worlds of Topia and Einder together as one.

“When I am presented with a space filled with lights, speakers, screens and so on, I see an overwhelming array of potential experiences. I think of all the different permutations you could have for each light in this position and that colour, accenting a particular rhythm in the music for this one moment and looking completely different in the next. The idea of finding and building all these looks in a conventional workflow where you program one cue after the other overwhelms me. I lean towards building tools that abstract the individual parameters of a system into something that I can play with in a more intuitive, tactile way, like a musical instrument. It opens up creative possibilities, I might not have found otherwise. When, and when combined with some randomness or generative data, input from sensors or other live media streams, you begin to see the system take on a life of its own and create these unique moments in a non-deterministic way. I find the whole process fascinating. At MUTEK, Boris’ fabric and light pieces pair so well with my ‘organic’ approach to control, and Zalán’s research has pushed me to completely rethink the roles of the screen and the audience in my work. There’s a lot to explore and illustrate in this collaboration”— Corey Schneider