Executable movies: on the existence and propriety of networked images

Abstract

This paper explores the existence and propriety of moving images within computer networks. It means to show that computer-based images are executable, standing for running software systems as much as the applications that are used to play, edit, copy and transmit them. Thus, in computation, movie and apparatus become completely mingled together, developing a complex materiality. Analysing how computers enact and distribute moving images, I end up evoking the concept of code as a parameter that sets conditions for medial property. According to this parameter, different media might retain their specific identities even if they become equivalent surface effects of the same socio-technical system.

Keywords

• Technical image
• software studies
• cinema
• materiality
• medium specificity