Visual rest

A sensation of ease and relaxation experienced when viewing calming content, visual rest in digital environments is often co-opted by streaming and hosting platforms to scrape user data and disengage subjects.

The crisp white background of many social media interfaces acts as a numbing mechanism to ease image consumption, while re-deploying colonial architectural tenants that link whiteness and hygiene. Even the content held within this sterile space, largely zombie formalist and minimalist design, are discrete objects heavy with this logic of rendering the subject disengaged.

Dreams were often seen as the final space separate from capital, however work dreams and stress dreams are common. The neoliberalization of visual rest is a form of hostility. We see the co-option of dreams as a kind of co-opting of rest space - the insomniac dream is preoccupied with future proofing.