Mark B N Hansen, has written a hell of an article discussing space and new media. Most interestingly he reintroduces the work of French philosopher Giles Deleuze to support his thoughtful and elaborate findings.
The idea of the Any Space Whatever is an interesting philosophical tool of Deleuze's which I've interpreted as meaning; The world exists and a single space, Humans have divided this space into many spaces through measurements, photography, cinema, property, national borders ect. The actual existence of these spaces can be debated.
I think it's important to be aware of how we shape the world around us with the ever so popular square viewfinder or the always precise metric system. These examples create a false sense of the definite and often lead us astray specifically when it comes to trying to understand art. This is what I believe Hansen's article is trying to say.
So what Hansen does is he attempts to apply the theory of the ASW to digital media where I have to say it fits tensely. This is of course because the digital world is made up entirely of measurements, numbers, and empirical data construed from the philosophy of definitive space. The virtual world mirrors the empirical minds of humans and for this reason I have great difficulty envisioning a digital ASW.
Regardless I think the philosophy here is still helpful in understanding Digital media. Specifically Lazzarini's Skulls where space is the subject. The perspectival distortions causing the viewer to shift about the room shows that people are looking for that comfortable division of space they have been trained to employ. They want the sculpture to fit nicely into their empirical frame of mind, and the point is driven home by them never being able to do so.
The BLIVET Illusion is a helpful example here. As humans we attribute space to the areas in between the lines, and never to the lines themselves. Though in fact in the real world these lines take up space. But in the digital world space isn't defined the same way. I'll use the example of a Pixel, nothing existed between the pixels, It isn't considered space. I'm sure Hansen would argue that there is space there. To this I would say that in some sense the virtual world contains no real space at all.
