The visibility of jpeg-encoded data yet the unvisibility of jpeg itself is not a chance occurrence. The fact that in my “digital imag(in)ing apparatus” the process of light-becoming-information works the way it does is because of material and concrete actor-networks: Google engineering labs, Apple design studios, surveillances state departments, academic practice-research committees etc. It is …
Category Archives: objects
Imag(in)ing theory – a draft presentation
I am giving a paper at the Practicing Theory – ASCA International Workshop 2011 in Amsterdam next week. The paper is available here, but the organisers, thankfully, do not want people to read their papers but rather give a short presentation of their work and reflect on others’. This is my draft ‘talk’: My work is …
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I strive for the mundane
In his discussion of location in relation to wirelessness, Adrian Mackenzie points out the importance of the less than interesting: “The act of ‘locating’ or the status of being ‘locative’ can become a topic of practice. These practices include building wireless networks in particular places, finding out what wireless nodes are present in a particular …
Kittler: software’s materiality
For Geoffrey Winthrop-Young, Kittler “refuses to betray the hardware for something delusional conjured up by the software” (2010: 118). He is of course right to draw out Kittler’s media archaeological emphasis on the materiality of media objects and object-relations. Like Crary, Friedberg, Zielinksi and Kirschenbaum, Kittler’s project is one of reclaiming the material apparatuses as …
The App in apparatus
Mobile phone cameras are examples of “digital imag(in)ing apparatuses”. They combine the various components, material and immaterial, hardware and software in a particular apparatus. The phone apparatus also optionally connects with network components as the phone connects to WiFi or 3G networks. It can also connect with (form alliances with) the social web by ‘sharing’ …
On occasion you need Whitehead
Jpeg withdraws from view. Just as one gets near to its working, it slips away. In my “digital imag(in)ing apparatus” jpeg is folded within the camera’s software, encoding light as data and leaving its traces indelibly in particular images and imaginings and enabling certain practices. It is enfolded in the structural relations of the imag(in)ing …