AESTHETICS OF DISAPPEARANCE, THE

Virilio himself referred to his 1980 work 'The Aesthetics of Disappearance' as a "juncture" in his thinking, one at which he brought his focus onto the logistics of perception - a logistics he would soon come to refer to as the "vision machine." If 'Speed and Politics' established Virilio as the inaugural - and still consummate - theorist of "dromology" (the theory of speed and the society it defines), 'The Aesthetics of Disappearance' introduced his understanding of "picnolepsy" - the epileptic state of consciousness produced by speed, or rather, the consciousness invented by the subject through its very absence: the gaps, glitches, and speed bumps lacing through and defining it. Speed and Politics defined the society of speed; 'The Aesthetics of Disappearance' defines what it feels like to live in the society of speed.