Remediated Voyeurism

The remediated self mutates the concept of subjectivity through the interplay of multimedia; however much the concept of self is mediated and remediated, the object--the windows of digital reality--are also remediated and reordered. This remediation of the object causes a constant dialogic shift of definition between both the object and the subject through the infinite regression of pop-up browser jacking.

The frames that define both the object and subject, define them in capitalistic terms, defining the subject as browser and the object as a consumable good. But this mere capitalistic rendering of subject/object interplay becomes far more sinister as the frame dissolves, where subject and browser become one. The nature of transparent immediacy, as Bolter would call it, reorients the user's point of view with that of the browser window "in an apparently seamless visual environment" (232). This reorientation is not simply a new perspective, but also a shift of the ideological nature of both the subject (the user) and the object (data viewed in the browser window). No longer are the subject and object defined in the simple terms of capitalism--the consumer and the consumed; They are now the voyeur and the fetish.

In some ways this binary was already present, except that the static framework placed a concrete barrier between the subject and object. Though the browser window is still present, the reorientation of perspective places the framework outside the peripheral view of the subject. The subject's presences is situated between the ideologies of the Enlightenment and Romantic. Unlike the Romantics, the remediated self does not want to actively search for reality nor, like the subject of the Enlightenment, does it want to be just a window shopper: it wants to be the window; it wants annihilation, where reality passively occurs in the bounds of the subject's frame, not aware of the subject's presence.

Situating the subject as the window does not orient it's gaze in just one direction. I am not claiming that the subject's gaze returns upon its self, but situates the browser in ways that it views other subjects, which also view the object of fetish.

As illustration--a vulgar illustration--the web phenomena of 2girls1cup. The object of the video did not gain its popularity just because of the video's nature, but because of the numerous webcam reaction of people watching the original. This phenomena turned both the video and the viewers as objects of fetish. In both cases, the subject is passively allowing the reality of the videos to pass through the browser. The subject is not an active participant in either case, but a voyeur hiding in the bushes watching the virtual and the real world.