User:Jasper van Loenen/RWRM/grasping-the-screen

Grasping the Screen

Towards a conceptualization of touch, mobility and multiplicity, Nanna Verhoeff

Verhoeff wants to use the Nintendo DS as an example device for answering some questions about the status of the mobile screen. It is a handheld gaming console from Nintendo which was released in 2004 and had a lot of features which were new for for this type of devices: voice-control options, WiFi connectivity, and both a normal and a touch-screen. These new functions enabled new gaming possibilities. Verhoeff is mainly interested in the way new functions ask for new applications which make use of these functions.

The DS is a console used to play games, using the on-screen image and the viewing and handling of the screen(s). Because you don’t only have to watch the screen but also interact with it (touchscreen), see calls this a practice.

There are a lot of similarities between this handheld console and older ones, even the two screens, but what is new is that this device is less limited: old consoles had a game baked into the system, as well as some static graphics (like backgrounds). What the DS shows is dependent on the game cartridge you put into it. That, together with the touchscreen, gives you a whole range of possible applications.

Theoretical objects are things which let you think about their possibilities in a theoretical manner, to think about what the object could be and what it could do instead of what it already is and does. Verhoeff says devices such as the DS are special types of theoretical objects. It is special because of its hybrid screen which can change into different interfaces, so she wants to call them theoretical consoles. I don't agree with her on this and don't see why you would make them into a sub genre: that way you can have sub genres for every device: my MacBook has a light sensor build into the screen, does that make it a theoretical notebook? She defends this statement by saying that the DS also is an theoretical object which you can question, but that it's consoleless makes these questions more complicated, turning it into a theoretical console. Since this consoleness is exactly what the DS is about, I don't think adding this layer is necessary.

The WiFi adds new options for sharing. You can always pass the device around, but the WiFi lets you share the device in a different way. It enables others to influence what is going on on your screen from their devices, turning your screen into a shared space. I actually don't think this is something DS specific (just look at computers), it just that the DS is the first handheld gaming device to use such a feature.

Thinking about this, I wonder what I would have thought of this text back in 2004. Now you take things like touch-screens for granted, influencing your opinion on this text. To be honest I thought the iPhone was about the first (semi-)gaming device with a touchscreen. I had to look up it's release date to learn it wasn't for sale until 2007, three years after the DS. Maybe referring to the DS as a theoretical console made sense back then because of it's new and special position, which the DS by now has lost.