Thick Mediation: Mud on Transparent Screens

This article challenges the recurrent claim that screens are disappearing by showing instead how they become ever more embodied and thus increasingly conceal the mediations they perform. It argues that the ideology of transparency—sustained by seamless design and the erasure of bodily opacity—produces both technological stagnation and a contraction of human agency. Drawing on Gilbert Simondon's notion of metastability and on media-phenomenological accounts of embodiment, the article examines Tom Gerhardt's Mud Tub as a tangible interface that restores friction and makes mediation experientially present. Finally, it connects these insights to contemporary artificial intelligence, suggesting that resisting the myth of transparency and recovering thick, bodily mediation is essential for navigating AI systems critically and for cultivating awareness of how interfaces shape perception and action.