14′
Single Channel Video
Full-HD, Stereo Sound
2024
On the Materiality of Digital Images
This film explores the reality and materiality of digital images. Since the analog always exists as a physical medium, the digital only exists in a state of uniform data and binaries. The medium itself, like a photograph, text, or video, does no longer exist in the digital world as its data is essentially the same, relying on “correct” interpretation of this data by the computer to become recognizable to us in its representational form of the medium it is meant to represent. The footage created for this film subverts this expectation of correct interpretation of data as it plays with different forms of forced misinterpretation and deliberate corruption of data. Questions about the original and the proper representation of digital images are raised. What is the reality of digital images and the algorithms that give rise to them?
This experimental film showcases the results of research and experimental practice in the field of Micro Narratives, a term developed by the Hong Kong based media-artist and scholar Linda Lai, conducted as part of a BA thesis at Leuphana University Lüneburg in Germany and City University of Hong Kong.
Through software manipulation, deliberate misinterpretation of raw video data, and a performative approach to video feedback, this film explores topics like the emergence of the new and the autonomy and materiality of digital images. The research behind this work draws ideas from Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Rosa Menkman, Claus Pias, Linda Lai, Hito Steyerl and others.
