Are the moving specks or threads that are often seen in front of our eyes, caused by dust and other fragments floating in the film, or a defect in the lens.⁽¹⁾ In cinema they are the accidental dust and scratches that have spoiled the design of the final cut, an unintentional addition onto the surface of the filmic material itself.

As they are projected, the partition between the intentional and accidental image is negated. The two images merge in a single flattened plane. The presence of these new additions being neither a disturbance nor an obstruction, just a presence.

Muscae volitantes occupy a unique plane of physical space. No other objects reside as closely to the eye, but strangely no other objects are as difficult to see. They merge with the eye itself. They become a part of the eye. They hover in the plane between inside and outside, a screen on the boundary between yourself and everything else, an adjunct on your window to the world. They are the only objects you can see that are nothing like something actually being in the way of your vision, as a hand held up to your eye would be, or anything else at all.

This is also the space in which Interlayers for the Internet reside. Their location is the fine plane between the user (the outside) and their interface (the inside).

The position and the presence of an unpredicted element that floats between the web page and the user works to disorientate the seamlessness of the interface experience. It draws attention to systems of actions and visual recognition with which the user and the interface interrelate.

This is the same strategy I might employ if I were to sketch a thin red line around your wrist to draw awareness to your body, to show the inner and outer limits, the border of your experience with the world, the existence of a surface of interaction between yourself and the other, your own interface in a manner of speaking. With this same method I draw a thin red line around your screen (see 1).

Muscae volitantes is Latin for flying flies.

New Zealand is the only place in the world where there exists flies that cannot fly: flightless flies.

(1) “Moving specks or threads seen before the eyes, caused by opaque fragments floating in the vitreous humour or a defect in the lens.” Collins English Dictionary.