Interface-Mediated Perception and Relational Subjectivity: The Post-Internet Aesthetics of Everything Everywhere All at Once
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.70088/dgtp8p95Keywords:
database narrative, glitch visuality, meme-like imagery, digital identity, ethics of careAbstract
Everything Everywhere All at Once translates networked existence into a multiverse narrative. Using post-internet aesthetics as an analytical framework, this article combines close textual analysis with media-cultural interpretation to examine how database-like branching, interface-mediated narration, meme-like imagery, glitch visuality, and switchable identities organize information overload, distributed attention, and anxiety about unrealized possibilities. Verse-jumping turns possible lives into callable paths, while props, bodily triggers, and visible distortions mark entry, transition, and return. The everything bagel and googly-eye sticker compress opposed orientations toward meaning into related visual forms. Multiple versions of Evelyn convert identity expansion into sustained comparison, yet the film also insists that information remains embodied and socially situated. In the final movement, Waymond's kindness and Evelyn's differentiated responses interrupt the search for an optimal path and relocate judgment within finite bodies, specific moments, and relations of interdependence. Relational subjectivity therefore marks a limit to a computational worldview without rejecting technology. The article also identifies questions for interface design research concerning state feedback, visual anchors, transition continuity, switching frequency, and path memory, while recognizing that familial repair cannot resolve structural pressures by itself.References
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