Mediated experience : the viewer in the age of digital technologies

Today new digital technologies produce augmented and virtual realities so tightly entangled in the web of our corporeal experiences that it calls for a new/deeply-modified definition of both the viewer and the voyeur - two figures traditionally identified with the prototypically theatrical way of perceiving and knowing the world. To tackle the topic, the article looks closely at David Cronenberg’s novel "Consumed" (2014), a first venture of the well-known Canadian film director and screenwriter on the field of literature. The chosen form of literary fiction allows him to demonstrate how various technologies (writing, photography, social media) as well as perceptual and narrative conventions mediate human experiences, understood not only as cognitive but also affective practices.