ABSTRACT
In a polemical stance against current media archaeologies, Francesco Casetti re-reads what film theories consider ‘proto-screens’—respectively Athena’s shield, which Perseus converted to a tool of warfare; Boutades’s wall, on which his daughter fixed her lover’s shadow; and Alberti’s window, which the artist transforms into a perspectival matrix. While these narratives are just that—narratives—they reveal many of our present-day assumptions and priorities. In particular, they uncover how screens do not exist as such. A screen becomes a screen thanks to an assemblage of elements and within a set of operations in which it can perform specific functions. Furthermore, screens are not only optical devices; they are environmental media. The dispositives illustrated by the three narratives heavily imply space: while exploiting environmental components, they address hands, legs, distances, and alignments as much as they move eyes and sights.
