to check if the performer is online.

Everything revolves around the zone. Getting in does not require a Tarkovskian loner to show you the way. As soon as your face unlocks the phone you are there. Time is stretched. The zone is activated and stimulated by your

. Hypertexts enfold. A mirror of self.

The zone is an apparatus composed of people, objects, digital platforms, electromagnetic fields, spaces, and rhythms. An accidental

of logics and logistics, dynamics and rules that allow it to exist, to evolve, and eventually to disappear once the premises that made it possible come undone.

The zone could be an almost fully automated Amazon warehouse as well as the network of shared scooters scattered around the city. It could be a group of riders waiting for orders outside your favorite take-away, or a TikTok house and its followers.

What are the

of the zone? What consistency does its reality have? Many replaced the physicality of the zone with a mood, a state of mind. Being . A condition of full immersion: a deep focus and total engagement.

This condition of immersiveness affects our perception and understanding of the world. How can we intervene beyond the limits it imposes on us?

Through a combined effort of imagining, listening, and direct involvement, we participate in a process of empathy with the non-human. How does the zone feel and how do we feel the zone? How does the zone perceive and inhabit the world?

We are

and on quartz screens. As a matter of fact, we are scrolling right now. Unknowingly or not, fingers are gliding on a smooth surface. The feeling is similar to that of gliding our fingers on the bathroom mirror after a shower. The purpose however changes: from drawing a to following icons. The same gesture - of removing water particles from a mirror looking back at you - is now suddenly chasing the information that the mirror is hiding.

This information:

A living surface extends nimble limbs to its surroundings. Touching, feeling, and receiving. Millions of cells with the purpose of bringing home information. To make the surroundings true. The palpable begets the real. The real begets personal truths.

But we are not the only ones to sense. Now the artificial surface is

too. It modulates human touch. It mediates, enables and engenders connections.

The touchscreen

our thumbs. Inputs finish their journey on the glass surface, after passing their legacy to the software that carries on their meaning. But what if we could deliver these inputs even further, instead of just landing them on the display?

Can we imagine touch as a form of presence, or even as a form of proximity? How can we depict the user's affection to the program, to the interface, and in this case, to the performer?

Digital technologies amplify the

and extent of information. Such amplification scales information to sizes that exceed perception. High frequencies are invisible to the human eye and thought, however we must not let them bug our instincts.

The common ground between digitalities and the body could be used as a platform for developing intuition strategies. These interfaces might give space to new trajectories where senses cannot reach.

To better understand their potential, we must focus on the crossway between how the zone feels and how we feel the zone.

What if

the Apostle well known for his doubt, actually believed from the very beginning in the resurrection of Christ and only touched to better grasp the divine being? What he did was not an act of incredulity, but an empirical experience of God through its physical interface.

The experience of @StThomas is a direct confrontation with Christ, one that overcomes the mediation of language or

A core concept here is the body's ability to approach the world via forms that do not completely overlap with logical-verbal reasoning.

Between 2015 and 2016, artist Trevor Paglen took different dives to the bottom of the ocean to find the submarine communication cables that permit our global networking. These cables are the evolution of those laid for telegraph communications centuries ago and underline the very physical nature of the Internet that is too often overlooked.

Here, Paglen’s immersion can be seen as an extension of the doubt of Saint Thomas into the digital age. The intangible field of wi-fi signals is replaced by the force of water pressure. This acts on the body as a dangerous sheath, shaping both movements and thoughts, surrounding, and winding the mind in its streams.

The digital system is not a static configuration, but rather a developing

of relations between technologies. Each configuration is forked, altered, and merged. Each arrangement enters the stage: sometimes denying the previous one, sometimes coexisting with it, and sometimes both. An ever-changing choreography that follows its own erratic pattern.

The zone seems to turn its back on rationality. Its super-expansion advances configurations which are contradictory and counterintuitive. Formal logic cannot hold on to X and NOT X at the same time, yet the zone can. In doing so, it undermines our attempts to access it through a rational approach and with a fixed bag of beliefs.

We are embodying a divergent condition that is gradually shapeshifting us into a weird state of being. A contemporary version of

the Roman god with two faces, learning to cope with such a thriving, incongruent multiplicity. Our thoughts cannot grasp all the layered hierarchies of these . We can only make sense of our first-hand experience, while all the rest sneaks by, even in plain sight.

Accessing the zone opens a path across our technical configuration, our physical displacement, and our everyday lives. On this

bizarre encounters happen.

Despite everyone’s own personal journey, the zone blurs the limits between different personalities fostering quantity over identity. There is no mediation between the routes that we trace. The zone seems to only focus on single layers, and not on the movements at work between them. It ties users up in their rendezvous, further entangling their passage, dampening away their empathy.

The two faces of Janus looking in specular directions - the past and the future, the inside and the outside - were historically set on many arcs and doors to look over passageways. In the context of the zone,

becomes the god of transitioning through the infrastructure, a protector of all the volatile bodies that wander through its layers: from gig economy riders to social media moderators. Maybe, during our wanderings, we could also take shelter under his protection. By treasuring his dual perspective we can better focus on our trajectories.

Inhabiting the zone, and aiming to approach its physical and intellectual challenges does not manage to deal completely with the moral and ethical issues that its nature arises. Sometimes a single direction prevails among the others.

implies the violent imposition of the shortest path by establishing its inertial force.

In order to achieve efficiency, the zone evens out the creases of its complexity with the weight of its infrastructure. The cruelty of its footprint overwhelms the same bodies that support and keep it moving forward. By exploiting the unprotected, it ensures the supposedly consistent functioning of its gears.

The flap of the butterfly wing has now been condensed into the tap of the finger. The hypothetical typhoon is now a confirmed order placed online and its imminent journey from an undisclosed warehouse to your doorstep.

We can finally perceive the instability of this massive system. We can now feel the

of the endless scroll.

Shifting the pivot from a logical intelligence to a material one - especially a corporal one - could provide us with cognitive structures better suited to grasp the multi-dimensional complexity of the zone.

Hence this concerted reading. A way to bring a multitude together. A text that displaces our bodies. Makes them dance, makes them halt. A

of imagining and listening, of gathering knowledge and accessing information. A process of empathy with other users and their journeys through the zone.

Thank you for reading and participating. You can keep on interacting with the performer by scrolling freely through the essay. When you are done, you can