Abstract

In his terrifying essay-cum-horror-story on the then nascent logic of ‘control’, Gilles Deleuze warned of a power that writhes and flexes like the ‘coils of a serpent’. Speculating on the transformative implications of the digital, he told of an ontological power, an adaptable power performed in complex systems of mediated communication, a power no longer restricted by the space-time of modern institutions. In this story, a monstrous control operates in the form of computational stimuli, functioning socially and biologically, infiltrating bodily relations so as to cultivate an addiction to its influence. The aim of such a power is not to fix or restrict radical energies but to manage or generate such processes by massaging relational potential, by mediating the becoming of the world. Here, I briefly consider how the 21st century actuality of such a monster might demand an adjustment in the study of visuality.