As an attempt to critically engage with the contemporary visual experience, this paper in three parts explores the horizontal, vertical, and virtual viewpoints. Its main purpose is to question the virtual realm as a place where technology allows for various visual experiences including new, digital and oblique perspectives on both horizontality and verticality. Various visual examples are taken from: selfie-taking, augmented and virtual realities (“Part One: Vir(tu)al Horizon(tal)”); architectural landscapes, aerial views, panoramas (“Part Two: The Vertical Gaze”); the photographic works of Sebastião Salgado, Yann Arthus-Bertrand, and Terry Boddie (“Part Three: Oblique Strategies”).

These selected entries are from a diary that I have been keeping since the beginning of the pandemic; they document the ways in which sounds have occupied my dreams, and my reflections about a new, perhaps quieter, perhaps sinister, soundscape experience.

As an attempt to critically engage with the contemporary visual experience, this paper in three parts explores the horizontal, vertical, and virtual viewpoints. Its main purpose is to question the virtual realm as a place where technology allows for various visual experiences including new, digital and oblique perspectives on both horizontality and verticality. Various visual examples are taken from: selfie-taking, augmented and virtual realities (“Part One: Vir(tu)al Horizon(tal)”); architectural landscapes, aerial views, panoramas (“Part Two: The Vertical Gaze”); the photographic works of Sebastião Salgado, Yann Arthus-Bertrand, and Terry Boddie (“Part Three: Oblique Strategies”).