Virilio's work has always been interested in showing the relationship between vision and the war machine. Any novel invention with regard to viewing whether it be in gaining an advantage over the enemy via the creation of the telescope, to see the enemy coming from a distance, or the discovery of depth perspective via artistic innovations such as those found in the Italian quattrocento, are all fi rst and foremost militarised.

Virilio's War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception (1989 [1984]) and The Vision Machine (1994b [1988]) use the examples of hot- air balloons with cameras attached to obtain aerial photos of the enemy dating back to the American Civil War and leading to the aviation photos and radar technologies of the Second World War where viewing is completely handed over to technological vision machines. In these instances, the innovations in viewing were based on novelties in perceiving images. Today, according to Virilio, we are witnessing a movement from a militarisation of the image to the militarisation of the optical fi eld of vision. This is quite a leap within not only how one views or perceives reality, but also in how one views the construction of reality tout court. As increasingly predictive cybernetic networks strive to ‘pre- see’, that is, to break through the walls between the past, the present and the future, distance and duration are obliterated and replaced by an instantaneous fi eld of vision that predicates itself not on objectivity or subjectivity but on what Virilio names tele- objectivity and tele- subjectivity. This machinic vision of collectively viewing actuality from an illusory prefabricated distance based on viewing actuality via a screen is no longer merely a question of a shift in the perspective of images, but in the entire process of seeing itself.