Harman’s fourfold structure allows us to understand a number of aspects of objects and their relations which are relevant not just for a comprehensive metaphysics, but also for our understanding of and work with JPEG. He argues that the two poles and their two qualities allows an understanding of time, space, essence and edios as well as causation, confrontation, theory, allure and causation.^⁠1 To take each in turn.

Time is important not just in terms of philosophy but also in terms of software imaging. Photography is a time-based medium. The digital imaging pipeline and the infinite archive of distributed imaginings are matters of permanence, transience and process. For Harman time can be understood as a matter of objects and their relations, specifically the tension between the sensual object and its sensual qualities (Harman 2011, p. 100). Time, as we experience it is “a remarkable interplay of stability and change” (Harman 2011, p. 100). The flower remains the same flower to us as it wilts, as the encrusted qualities or profiles shift and change. In terms of protocol, JPEG endures. The JPEG a human or unhuman object encounters remains a presence even as its particular instantiations shift. Encoding my light-as-data today or yesterday, on quality setting 5 or 10  are different. We experience those imaging moments or encounters as happening in different ‘times’ but they can equally be seen as encountering different objects. The advantage of seeing them in those terms is we remain focused at the scale of the object and avoid falling into debates about the ‘arrow of time’ or discrete instances, process and becoming. What is more, when we work with object-oriented imaging, we can build new (object) apparatuses that explore that tension.

Space too can be addressed through objects, specifically the tension between real objects and their sensual qualities. The withdrawn RO has SQ that project into the world. If it did not we could not the object could not be accessible to thought or action. These qualities are what we relate to. But that tension is also about non-relation as well. The real 2012 Olympic velodrome withdraws from me. I cannot access its complete objecthood. But I do encounter its qualities, those aspects of its nature that project into my camera view as I walk around the Fence. That relation happens in Newham. When I sit writing or thinking about the velodrome in France^⁠2, those sensual qualities are not present to me. I am not in the same relation with the real velodrome object.^⁠3 “Space is not the site of relation, but of both relation and non-relation” (Harman 2009, p. 218).

It may seem odd to think of JPEG in terms of space. After all as a software protocol or standard it does not have the same physical presence as a piece of architecture. Recall however that size does not matter and also that the real withdrawn JPEG does have sensual qualities by which we encounter it.

Digital imaging is a matter of space and JPEG does have a spatial dimension – just a rather weird one. What is interesting about JPEG is that it highlights the different sense of space we are dealing with in distributed media. Regardless of physical presence we are in relation with JPEG. Space collapses. As I explore in my two imaging apparatuses (the Mashup and the RAW/JPEG camera), digital imaging happens offline and online. Pressing the button on my camera or phone sets the digital imaging pipeline in play, encoding light-as-data in a particular location of imaging. Accessing Flickr or a Google image search (or using my mashup) is also digital imaging. Pressing reload sets a distributed imaging pipeline in play. That imaging happens on a server somewhere in the US, on my iPad in my hand or someone else’s desktop – potentially in multiple spaces. But those multiple spaces are co-present in JPEG. Imaging objects (the imager, the hardware and software) are all present to each other regardless of physical space. In the digital imaging pipeline I have a relation with the sensual qualities of JPEG (its particular instantiations or eruptions into my sphere of presence) as I walk around the Fence. I also have a relation with the sensual qualities of JPEG as I call on it on a Google server thousands of miles away. It may only be the sensual qualities that we are in relation with, the RO withdraws, but I am in the same relations with the sensual qualities of that RO wherever I am. This does not undermine Harman’s account of what space is from an object-oriented point of view, it more interestingly gives us a way of approaching the weird nature of online space.

A third tension Harman identifies, that between the RO and its RQ, gives him a way of talking about essence. A real object has real qualities, what make it what it is. We may not be able to access the complete nature of the velodrome, but it is a velodrome not the athletics stadium or a security guard. Similarly, JPEG has RQ that make it JPEG not DNS or TIFF. This tension is what we commonly call essence. Here essence is not some stable ontological category or analytical folk-devil, but a dynamic tension within the object. An object’s essence is not dependent on other objects in a Saussurean sense but a matter of a tension within an objects quadruple form. The advantage of this account is not only that we can embrace the concept of ‘essence’ without being accused of determinism or reductionism and once again we can refuse to depend on relationality as defining objects, but also we can explore the specifics of JPEG as opposed to other protocols (as I look to do with my RAW/JPEG apparatus)

The fourth tension in play within the fourfold is that between the SO and its RQ. As well as the tension between the SO and its accidental surface qualities (SQ) (time), there is a tension between the object we encounter and its “truly crucial qualities revealed though a process of eidetic variation” (Harman 2011, pp. 100-1). These eidetic traits (RQ) are accessible by intellectual but not sensuous intuition. We can strip away the SQ and reach the nucleus of an object that makes it what it is “for those who perceive it” (Harman 2011, p. 101). Note that Harman is not saying that this intellectual endeavour gives us access to the reality of the object which always withdraws.  We perceive the velodrome. We mentally strip away all the surface accidents, the particular way the light falls or the viewpoint we take. We are left with a form that we perceive as the Olympic Velodrome. It is the tension between that form and the object we perceive that Harman (following Husserl) calls eidos. This is not the same as essence. There are no real qualities or objects here. This all happens within the perceptual, sensual realm. What is the reality of the velodrome, let alone what is its fundamental nature remains hidden and withdrawn

In terms of JPEG, my image editing programme-object ‘perceives’ JPEG’s surface qualities – particular instantiation or running but it also encounters its crucial qualities the form of the digital imaging pipeline that is JPEG, the particular Huffman or Quantization table. This tension between the instantiation and the form (this edietic tension) is important because it enable us to address the way JPEG is simultaneously dynamic and static. It is standard and has a particular form but also multiple possible instantiations and runnings. Here process is addressed through objects and their tensions.

Harman calls these four relations between the different poles “tensions” as a way of highlighting the way that the poles relate, what he calls fission and fusion.

The relations between a SO and its numerous sparkling features (SQ) that we experience as time, suffers ruptures – a “momentary breakdown in the former balance between sensual objects and their qualities; the object is briefly exposed as unified kernel dangling its qualities like marionettes”{Harman 2011c@103). At the moment of passing the velodrome at dusk we realise that unified kernel has transient sensual qualities as the light sparkles on the wood panelling – “I never noticed that before”. At the moment of encoding light-as-data we realise we can pick various compression settings. We (or the Web 2.0 business’ servers) are confronted with the transient qualities. The tension breaks: fission. The same break can happen in the tension between the SO and its RQ (edios). It is only through the intellectual labour of paring down that the real qualities can be accessed. This ‘reverse engineering’ through ‘theory’ is a matter of fission, breaking. As we shall see, it is this process of fission I look to explore in my RAW/JPEG apparatus.

The other two relations, between the RO and its SQ (which we know as space) and its RQ (which we know as essence) are also best understood as tensions but this time characterised by ‘fusion’. Real objects and their sensual qualities only meet when they are fused. “In such cases the sensual qualities are stripped from their current sensual overlord and appear to orbit a withdrawn real object”{Harman 2011c@105). The real, withdrawn, inaccessible velodrome has sensual qualities in particular locations as I circle it. Its sensual qualities fuse with it in a process Harman likens to aesthetic allure, as I look or take a photograph. Even in the non-locational space of JPEG, the SQ of JPEG that I engage with are fused to ‘JPEG’ so I can image with it or write about it. That weird question of JPEG and space that arises as we fuse the perceived with the withdrawn is similarly aesthetic, a matter of allusion. At the same time the relation between the RO and its RQ is again a matter of fusion. The essential characteristics of an object are fused as part of the withdrawn entity by an outside entity, a mediating term. As we have noted, objects meet others within objects. They effect each other within/through objects which fuse them in a process Harman calls ‘causation’. The Huffman table as one of JPEG’s essential RQ is fused as a part of ‘JPEG’ (the RO) by Photoshop as it encodes the data as a particular file at a particular setting. As we shall see, it is this process of fusion I look to explore in my mashup apparatus.

¹ This theme has been developed over the past few years in Harman’s work. This chapter concentrated on that presented in The Quadruple Object but earlier workings can be see in  (Harman 2009, pp. 214-221) (Harman 2010a) (Harman 2010b)

² I am not talking about any images on my computer in France but rather a more metaphysical presence in terms of my object connection with the velodrome through my thesis or my position as a taxpayer in an Olympic borough.

³ I may of course be in another relation with my my memory or even photos of the velodrome but these are different objects.

• Harman, G., 2009, Prince of Networks: Bruno Latour and Metaphysics, Anamnesis, Melbourne.
• Harman, G. 2010a, Space, Time, and Essence: An Object-Oreinted Approach (2008), in Towards Speculative Realism : Essays And Lectures, Zero Books, Winchester and Washington, pp. 140-69.
• Harman, G., 2010b, Time, Space, Essence, and Eidos: A New Theory of Causation, Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, 6(1), pp. 1-17.
• Harman, G., 2011, The Quadruple Object, Zero Books, Ropley.

As I have noted, Harman’s framework of autonomous, actual objects does not preclude the sort of actant networks that Latour talks about, and the sort of techno-social assemblages addressed by software studies. In fact the power of Harman’s quadruple object is that it offers a powerful way of  addressing the relations between human and unhuman actants, the sort of relations within which JPEG is enfolded, that characterise scopic governmentality and that I notice and work within my own practice. Harman is clear that these relations do not define the object. Rather his model looks for an object-oriented account of relations.

Real objects withdraw and so cannot ‘touch’. The tree, cat, protocol or social network business are deeper, more mysterious and weird than another object (whether photographer, CCD or search algorithm) can access. “Their reality consists solely in their being what they are, not in some sort of impact on other things” (Harman 2011, p. 73). But objects do connect. We know this in our experience. My JPEG apparatuses, imaging practices as well as the governmental scopic regime demonstrate objects connecting and reconnecting in power-full ways.

At the same time, sensual objects cannot touch each other. Harman says:

“The various sensual objects that co-exist in a single intentional act (intentional trees, mountains, leopards) merely sit around in a contiguous state, touching one another only in the sense that the perceiver perceives them both simultaneously. After all sensual objects consist only in being encountered, not in encountering. If I expend my energy in taking them seriously, they themselves have no such energy to expend; they are purely passive figments for an encounter of my own. Hence they are incapable of direct interaction of any sort, and belong to the same perceptual moment only through the mediation of me the perceiver. real objects can touch only through the medium of an intentional object, and intentional objects can touch only through the medium of a real one” (Harman 2009, p. 208).

In terms of digital imaging, neither I as the real photographer (object) nor the silicon chip as the real hardware object, can encounter or touch the full unfathomable, weird, withdrawn reality of JPEG. We withdraw from each other. As real objects, I and the chip do encounter JPEG in a particular sensual instantiation or form.The datamining algorithm that ‘reads’ JPEG-encoded light-as-data, certainly ‘touches’ JPEG in its creation of a marketing data point, but only the sensual dimension, that sense of JPEG that is present to perception. Real can encounter, connect with sensual. The point for Harman is that encounter, connection or relation does not happen in a field of becoming, plasma or potentiality but within another object. Why does that matter? Because it means we can explore it, critically and creatively.

When the (real) chip inside my camera encounters the (sensual) instantiation of JPEG as light is encoded as data, this happens literally within another object (the camera), but also ontologically within the ‘digital imaging pipeline’ object. Remember that for Harman, an object is anything that has a unity, presence and power. It doesn’t matter whether it is short-lived or conceptual. What matters is that it has an independent existence for other objects: the camera, me as photographer or me here as writer.

Similarly  the (real) JPEG, that withdrawn unity that works within the digital imaging industries, technosocial and governmental regimes and assemblages, does encounter the sensual dimension to other objects: the particular instantiation of me as JPEG imager, the particular elevator pitch of a Web 2.0 start-up. These do not happen in some psychological, semiotic or capitalist plasma, field of potential or relations. JPEG encounters the imager within an imaging object, a specific, unified, present actant in the world. That moment of imaging is not a process. It is an object, with a unity and presence for an another object. JPEG encounters the pitch to the VC within a rhetorical discourse of interoperability, social media and market share. That discourse is not a field of becoming or context. It is an object, a unified actant itself connecting with other financial, technological and political actants. Again that object has a unity and presence because it can be approached or present for other actants. This asymmetrical account of objects connecting within objects not only keeps the focus on objects and allows the actant-network to be mapped in its specificity and presence but also opens up a space for object-oriented practice, in my case imaging.

Harman often talks about these connections as happening within the ‘molten’ core of another object (Harman 2009, p. 215). In The Quarduple Object he phrases it slightly differently: “any relations immediately generates a new object”Harman 2011c@117}. The point is the same. The ‘digital imaging pipeline’, ‘photography’ or ‘business plan’ as objects are the site of connection. The enfoldings, relations and their governmental implications are located at the scale of objects.

Harman is not content with mapping only the real object-sensual object connection. He takes his fourfold structure of objects as a basis for mapping the full range of possible connections. And it is this that allows him to approach issues of ‘fusion’ and ‘fission’ themes that go to the heart (perhaps even molten core) of my practice and scopic governmentality.

• Harman, G., 2009, Prince of Networks: Bruno Latour and Metaphysics, Anamnesis, Melbourne.
• Harman, G., 2011, The Quadruple Object, Zero Books, Ropley.

At the core of Harman’s conception of a unified, autonomous object is actually the idea of two objects: the sensual and the real objects (Harman 2009, p. 190).

He looks to bring together Husserl’s framework of intentional objects, the objects present to consciousness with Heidegger’s account of real objects that withdraw from access.

Husserl, whom Harman calls “an object-oriented idealist” (2011, p. 20), held that objects do not exist outside our consciousness (Harman 2009, p. 194). The camera on my desk, the CCD inside, the software ‘inside’ exist as intentional objects within my consciousness. When I sleep or fail to pay attention to them, in some sense they cease to exist. Intentional objects “exist only as passive figments encountered by something real” (Harman 2009, p. 213). It is this split and relationships between the real and the sensual that Harman’s quadruple structure seeks to unpick.^⁠1

For Husserl:

“we never see all faces of the hammer at once, but always see it from a certain angle and distance, in a certain colour and intensity of light, and always in a specific mood. In this sense the hammer only appears in the form of specific profiles or adumbrations […] It does not matter that we can never see the whole series of hammer-adumbrations—this series is not the hammer. For Husserl, the hammer is the ideal unity that makes each profile a profile of the same hammer; the hammer is not a series of appearances of any sort. Hence, our inability to run through the infinite series of possible hammer-appearances deprives us of nothing as concerns the object. Nothing is ‘hidden’ behind the adumbrations for Husserl; the hammer itself lies within each adumbration, as an eidos encrusted with accidents.” (Harman 2009, p. 180).

To put it in terms of protocol: the JPEG we (or any other object) encounters happens in the intentional or phenomenal realm. Husserl’s intentional object is hidden from us but in a different way to Heidegger’s wikdrawn object. For Husserl, the intentional object is hidden only insofar as the object present to us inevitably comes encrusted with particular adumbrations, accidents, details, qualities. JPEG is ‘hidden’ only insofar as we encounter it through particular instantiations. We never encounter all of JPEG only a particular instantiation or dimension (encoding or decoding). It is not just that the workings of Huffman coding or DCT happen so fast or so mysteriously that we cannot ‘see’ them, it is that neither humans nor unhumans can encounter all possible dimensions of those characteristics. Another software object could run through every possible DCT and Huffman table, every possible encoding permutation but that would be just the equivalent of listing every possible view of a hammer in every possible light, situation and mood. Neither superhuman endeavour would exhaust the object. It may exhaust the ‘accidents’ but not the thing itself.

Harman reads Husserl’s accidents or adumbrations that swirl around the object we encounter as ‘qualities’. He argues that the sensual object (SO) that human and unhuman actants encounter displays two tensions: between the SO and its’ sensual qualities’  (SQ) and between the SO and its ‘real qualities’ (RQ). The SQ are the particular profiles of the SO, the object’s accidents or qualities, the particular instantiations of encoding, decoding or creation of a JFIF or EXIF file.

But the sensual JPEG is also in tension with its RQ. Harman says that if one were to strip away all the (SQ) accidents in a particular encounter or perception., what remains is not merely an ‘empty pole of unity […] a ‘bare particular,’ in the terms of analytic philosophy. Instead, we approach what Husserl calls the edios of an object” (2011, p. 27). The eidos of a sensual object is the form that ensures the objects I encountered or perceived as that object. There is something (the RQ) of a tree that means we perceive it as a tree no matter the light or the weather. There is something (the RQ) of JPEG that means an object (me as the photographer, the computer chip or software) knows it is working with JPEG. Just as we may come up close to a tree and realise it is a scarecrow (encounter a different eidos) so we could try an encode with JPEG but realise we are approaching JPEG2000. This is nothing to do with the SQ the particular accidents or momentary instantiations. This is a sensual connection with a different form (in a Husserlian rather than Platonic form (Harman 2009, p. 199)), a different eidos with different real qualities. If SQ are encrusted on the surface, RQ are ‘submerged’%Harman 2011c@29}, hidden but vital to our encounter with the object.

It is important to note that for Harman these ‘essential’ qualities are not universal. These are not the ‘eternal objects’ of Whitehead. Rather they are always particular to an individual object. When I press the button and encounter the sensual JPEG (that dimension to JPEG that I work with), I encounter a particular running of JPEG, in a particular moment, within a particular apparatus (JPEG’s SQ). I also encounter JPEG’s RQ, its particular digital imaging pipeline that make JPEG particular. These RQ can only be accessed by intellectual not sensuous intuition. One can map out JPEG’s form, its particular digital imaging pipeline, as I do in Chapter XX. But that is an intellectual, abstract exercise not an issue of perception. But that edios/form, those RQ are particular to JPEG. Colour transforms, DCT and Huffman Coding can be used in other applications or pure maths but when it is part of JPEG it has a particularity.

To summarise the sensual dimension to JPEG. Other objects in play (whether me as the photographer, the CCD, Facebook’s data-mining algorithm or a police database) encounter JPEG. They ‘perceive’ it in terms of working with it. That JPEG has a unity, a presence, a position in consciousness, even if that consciousness is not human but rather ‘virtual’.^⁠2 This is the JPEG ‘sensual object’ (SO). That SO has two dimensions. It has particular a particular form, a way of arranging the digital imaging pipeline that makes it recognisably JPEG. This form is essential to it. Without it, we would not have JPEG. Alongside side these ‘real qualities’ or eidetic traits (RQ) we have particular shifting instantiations of JPEG. Each time I press the button or Photoshop saves an image file, we encounter a particular instance. JPEG appears in a particular form (‘super high quality’ compression or ‘save as’; a particular Huffman or Quantization table). These encrusted features of JPEG can and do shift and change in each encounter. We (Photoshop and I) encounter shifting profiles of JPEG, its sensual qualities (SQ).

Harman’s sensual objects are what we encounter. The reason we need this conception or dimension to the object is because the real object withdraws. Harman brings Husserl together with Heidegger’s tool analysis (which he explored in more detail in Tool Being (2002)).^⁠3 Heidegger argues that the eyeglasses I use to look at this screen, my heart beating, the computer operating system and protocols are ‘ready-to-hand’ but are not present to us unless they break, stop working or fail. Objects disappear in favour of some purpose they serve (2011, p. 38)… at least until they crash.

These objects area real. They have an existence beyond the phenomenal realm. For Heidegger:

“the being of any object is always deeper than how that object appears to us. In the eyes of Heidegger, Husserl’s phenomena are merely present-at-hand in consciousness, exhausted by their appearance to us. Yet Heidegger holds that the hammer cannot be reduced to a set of visible features—not even essential ones—because these features are not what do the work of hammering in the world. The hammer as a Husserlian intentional object is always already present as soon as we acknowledge it, and is merely encrusted with non-essential features. By contrast, the hammer for Heidegger is a real entity that invisibly does its work in the cosmos” (Harman 2009, pp. 180-1).

Again in terms of JPEG: there is a real JPEG, a unity, an object but, unlike for Husserl, its reality is never accessible to us. It never appears. We may glimpse JPEG when the upload fails or, as in my work it is made to sit alongside RAW-encoding that breaks its transparency. The sensual instantiations we encounter do not exhaust JPEG because they are not what ‘do the work’. As I shall argue that ‘work of JPEG’ is deeply governmental, even disciplinary and the instantiation of JPEG (its encoding and decoding) we or even Facebook’s data-mining algorithm encounter are not the full story. JPEG’s “subterranean tool-being” is weirder and more power-full than that.

The real JPEG is not real in opposition to some imaginary, virtual or even ’sensual’ JPEG. It is a dimension to the object that lies beyond our sensual encounter and beyond relations. Real objects withdraw from our consciousness and also from all relations. Harman talks of cats:

“The real cats continue to do their work even as I sleep. These cats are not equivalent to my conception of them, and not even equivalent to their own self-conceptions; nor are they exhausted by their various modifications and perturbations of the objects they handle or damage during the night. The cats themselves exist at a level deeper than their effects on anything. real objects are non-relational” (Harman 2009, pp. 194-5)

As with cats, so with JPEG. It exists when I sleep or when I am using a paintbrush to image. It exists beyond its sensual presence in my or an algorithm’s imaging or processing. “Real objects exist ‘whether we like it or not’” (Harman 2009, pp. 195-6).

Harman is at pains to distance his reading of Heidegger from what he sees as a view that Heidegger’s withdrawn realm is a “deeper unified system of reference” (2011, p. 35) which he would see as a case of ‘undermining’. Objects withdraw not into some field or monastic lump of being but into themselves, into “private interiors, barely able to relate at all” (2011, p. 36). The reason we cannot reach JPEG, the reason it slips through our fingers and all we are left with are its traces in JFIF or EXIF files or our sensual encounters with its instantiations, is because, as with all objects, JPEG “does its work in the cosmos”. It has a reality beyond any relations or particular instantiations. This reality is not located in the specifications of the Joint Photographic Experts Group. It is a metaphysical reality: its status as object.

The ‘real object’ (RO) is “autonomous from whatever encounters it” (2011, p. 48). There is JPEG without me, Olympus or Javascript (which can only encounter or touch the sensual JPEG).  When I pick up a pencil or switch the camera off, the sensual JPEG vaporises but the real JPEG does not. It still has an ontological reality, an object status.

Just as the SO exists in tensions with its real and sensual qualities, so the RO has sensual qualities (SQ) which it “emits […] into the sphere of presence, despite being withdrawn in its own right” (2011, p. 49). The qualities we encounter, the particular instantiations of JPEG that objects like me or Google search work with, must come from something real not just something phenomenal. JPEG is not just phenomenal (although that is how we access it), it is also real. Similarly the real object cannot be an empty unit, a blank thing. It has real qualities (RQ), the essence that makes it object A not object B.

Harman draws on Leibniz’s argument that: “monads must have qualities, otherwise they would not even be beings” (Leibniz 1989, p. 216). Or in other words, each monad “needs a multitude of qualities to be what it is, to differ from other monads rather than be interchangeable with them” (2011, p. 49). The real, withdrawn tree has to have something essential about it to make it a tree not a shrub, this tree not that one. In terms of JPEG, it is not just the form of the digital imaging pipeline (the sensual object’s real qualities) that marks JPEG out but also the specific, essential qualities or elements that make it what it JPEG not GIF or TCP/IP. Huffman coding and DCT are vital parts of the real JPEG. We do not, indeed cannot, encounter them directly but without them JPEG would not be the object it is.

To summarise the real dimension to JPEG. There is a real JPEG, an ontological object, as I discuss earlier. It is more than the sensual object we encounter in imaging, searching, archiving or data-mining. But it is inaccessible. It only become apparent when it breaks, crashes, fails. That real JPEG exceeds its relations. It is not only more than a particular instantiation or presence to perception or imaging, it has an existence outside any other object. This is the JPEG ‘real object’ (RO). That RO has two dimensions. Although it withdraws, we know it exists. It projects into the world – not least when it breaks. These sensual qualities are what is accessible to thought or action. The JPEG RO has SQ I can write about, build apparatuses to explore etc. The JPEG RO also has real qualities (RQ, essential features that make JPEG… JPEG.

What this initial quadruple structure of the object gives us is a model that allows us to map the weird character of JPEG: the fact that it clearly exist but is hard to pin down (its RO withdrawal), its presence to us and other objects within imaging (its SO dimension and its RO-SQ tension) and its particular character and position, its specific form and essence as particular arrangements of coding and transforms within a digital imaging pipeline (its SO-RQ and RO-RQ tensions). This is all possible as a matter of objects. When we move on to address how objects connect, how those connections break and what happens when they do, we can see the power of this model for addressing how objects relate to governmentality as well as object-oriented photographic practice.

¹ Harman prefers to use the more ‘charming’ term ‘sensual’ for this dimension of objects. He says: “Husserl uses ‘intentional’ to refer only to the unified objects of consciousness, while excluding the shifting surface qualities of things from the intentional domain. So-called ‘sense data’ are not intentional for Husserl, precisely because they are not object-oriented. For this reason, a new unified term is needed that covers both the enduring objects of consciousness and the overly specific facades through which they are always manifest” (Harman 2009, p. 136).

² I am conscious of the difficulties of this language, particularly in terms of the use of the term ‘virtual’ notably in the thinking of Deleuze. I am using it here merely to address the way the space of the infinite archive and networked software connects with JPEG.

³ It is important to re-emphasise that I am not looking to engage with the philosophical deabtes around Heidegger or Husserl or even Harman’s reading of them. Rather I am taking Harman’s reformulation of them in The Quadruple Object (2011) as my starting point.

• Harman, G., 2002, Tool-being: Heidegger and the metaphyics of objects, Open Court, Chicago.
• Harman, G., 2009, Prince of Networks: Bruno Latour and Metaphysics, Anamnesis, Melbourne.
• Harman, G., 2011, The Quadruple Object, Zero Books, Ropley.
• Leibniz, G.W., 1989, Philosophical Essays, Translated by R. Ariew & D. Garber. Hackett Pub. Co., Indianapolis.