Digital Ontologies: The Ideality of Form in/and Code Storage—or— Can Graphesis Challenge Mathesis?

Item Type Journal Article
Author Johanna Drucker
URL http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/002409401750184708
Volume 34
Issue 2
Pages 141-145
Publication Leonardo
Date April 01, 2001
DOI 10.1162/002409401750184708
Accessed 2010-03-02 19:23:25
Library Catalog MIT Press Journals
Abstract Digital media gain their cultural authority in part because of the perception that they function on mathematical principles. The relationship between digital images and their encoded files, and in other cases, between digital images and the algorithms that generate them as display, lends itself to a conviction that the image and the file are mutually interchangeable. This relationship posits a connection of identicality between the file and the image according to which the mathematical basis and the image seem to share similar claims to truth. Since the history of images within Western culture is fraught with charges of deception and illusion, the question arises whether the ontological condition of the digital image, its very existence and identity, challenges this tradition. Or, by contrast, does the material instantiation of images, in their display or output, challenge the truth claims of the mathematically based digital file?
Title Digital Ontologies: The Ideality of Form in/and Code Storage—or— Can Graphesis Challenge Mathesis?
Short Title Digital Ontologies
Date Added 2010-03-02 14:23
Date Modified 2010-03-02 14:23

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