Digital Abject

Digital materiality has primarily been discussed in two domains.

On the one hand, digital materiality critically captures the physical infrastructure that undergirds digital systems.[1] It points to the falsely claimed immateriality that has been perpetuated by the language used around the Internet. Terms such as “the cloud” make the Internet sound ephemeral and apolitical, despite the Internet’s reliance on an expansive undersea cable network that sustains existing colonial relationalities.[2]

On the other hand, scholars explore how we might conceive of digital materiality as such.[3] The physicality of digital media itself has been obscured by the argument that the digital based on binary information is immaterial. However, as Nathalie Casemajor points out: “noise, errors, signal distortion and entropy result from material phenomena such as failures in circuit components or signal interference on transmission lines.”[4]

I approach digital materiality from a phenomenological standpoint, as a sensuous manifestation of the digital, and turn in this video essay to digital image manipulation techniques such as glitching, datamoshing and morphing. By upsetting the image with error and noise, these digital effects turn digital matter into a visible and tangible layer, normally hidden behind the semantics of the image. I affiliate digital materiality, and more specifically these digital procedures, with terms such as “plasticity,”[1] the “vitality of the medium,”[2] and “haptic visuality.”[3] Plasticity, a concept developed by Catherine Malabou, denotes both the capacity to take form and give form, and an articulation of matter through the destruction of form. Glitching, datamoshing and morphing, when applied at the level of the pixel, codec and resolution, are destructive techniques that unsettle the meaning of the image by emphasizing its plasticity. I connect this enhanced plasticity to what Joanna Zylinska and Sarah Kember call the vitality of the medium: a capacity for liveness within the mediation process, conditioned in this specific case by destructive digital effects. The plasticity and vitality of digital materiality lead to a haptic visuality, as termed by Laura Marks. Haptic visuality refers to a mode of tactile perception of the image, triggering a multisensory response in the viewer.

In this video essay, I explore what I call “digital abject,” emerging at the intersection of destructive digital effects and representations of human bodies. In such cases, bodies are disordered, fragmented, digitally disfigured, and transformed into abstract and affective matter. The body, normally tied to specific categories such as race and gender, both controlled and controlling, instead becomes an empty shell, a surface, abstract digital matter. Digital abjection creates possibilities to re-examine and re-compose bodies within the digital image, and with it to re-contextualize the intricate and complex relationship between (the materiality of) bodies, identities, and their representation in media.

WHAT IS DIGITAL MATTER?

PIXEL

CODEC

RESOLUTION

(SET OF RULES)

WHAT IS A BODY?

REPRESENTATION

(SET OF RULES)

WHAT IS A DIGITAL ABJECT?

ERROR

NOISE

ACCIDENT

MALFUNCTION

ERASING REPRESENTATION

DISASSEMBLING CONTROL

UNDOING MEDIATION

SKIN IS A CONTAINER.

IT IS A PEEL THAT CONTAINS

AND CRADLES WILDNESS.

A BREAK, TEAR, RUPTURE

OR CUT IN SKIN OPENS A PORTAL AND PASSAGEWAY.

DIGITAL ABJECT

IS THE JETTISONED (DIGITAL OBJECT);

IS RADICALLY EXCLUDED REPRESENTATION;

IS THE PLACE WHERE MEANING COLLAPSES.

WE USE BODY TO GIVE FORM TO SOMETHING

THAT HAS NO FORM,

THAT IS ABSTRACT, COSMIC.

THE ANTI-BODY RESISTS THE BODY

AS A COERCIVE SOCIAL AND CULTURAL ARCHITECTURE.

AS WE FAIL,

WE MORPH.

AS WE MORPH,

WE TRANSCEND CAPTIVITY,

SLIPPERY TO THE FORCES THAT STRIVE

TO RESTRICT,

RESTRAIN,

AND CENSOR US.

WE’VE BEEN PRESENTED WITH A SHARP VISION OF DECAY.

 A NONPERFORMANCE THAT VEERS US

TOWARD A WILD UNKNOWN.

THIS IS WHERE WE BLOOM.

IT IS TIME FOR NEW MECHANICS.

LET’S MUTATE PLEASE.

BYE, BINARY!

BUFFER FOREVER