The elimination of discrete pagination in favor of a continuous scroll in web design can be read as the naturalization or invisibilization of the gaps between different pieces of content. Instead of clearly differentiating one from another, the scroll presents us with a single temporal image. That is, an image in motion, a moving picture. If figurative still images are two dimensional representations that, through the calculated placement of elements, open a window to a third dimension, the positioning of images in the scroll reveals not depth, but movement and an according flow of time. Early 20th century avant-garde movements, like post-impressionism, cubism, and futurism, considered time as a fourth dimension that revealed the conventionality of the invisible perspective space structuring our vision. In this sense, the scroll or the moving image is akin to text and analytical thought: it critically tackles the delusive synthesis of perspective. It’s an iconoclastic image; one that doesn’t show us space as fully constituted, but in the process of becoming. And yet, the scroll is experienced all-at-once, not like a train of distinct words, but as a stream that sucks you in with its overflow of sensorial stimuli.

Feautured sounds: Be a Body - Warnymph (Grimes)


Other related media: Google Arts & Culture


Further reading:
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1964, 2006). L'Oeil et L'Esprit. Paris: Gallimard.