1(1) 2015: Digital Materialism

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Reciprocal Materiality and the Body of Code. A Close Reading of the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII)
Heilmann, Till A. (2015) , S. 39-52
Materiality has often been a neglected factor in discussions of digitally encoded information. While a lot of early works in media studies suffered from this shortcoming, questions regarding the materiality of digital technology and artefacts have slowly gained prominence in recent debates. Matthew Kirschenbaum’s concept of “forensic” and “formal” materiality has proven particularly useful to the study of digital artefacts, differentiating the (routinely over-looked) physical existence of digital data from their (commonly discussed) logical character. However, analyses concerning the materiality of digital artefacts are often one-sided, focussing on the physicality of the medium in which digital data are inscribed. To counter this bias, I present the concept of a ‘reciprocal materiality’ of digital data: It is not only that digital data are always inscribed in some material substrate (Kirschenbaum’s ‘forensic’ dimension of data); conversely, the materiality of the medium inscribes itself into the structure of digital data (its ‘formal’ level). The ‘body of code’ is shaped by the material framework it inhabits. I will illustrate this using as an example one of the most important encoding schemes in the history of digital technology: the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII). A ‘close reading’ of the technical specifications of ASCII – a standard designed in the early 1960s to work across multiple technological platforms – will reveal the extent to which this code incorporates the materiality of media such as punched tape and teletype terminals.
Swipe to Unlock. How the Materiality of the Touchscreen Frames Media Use and Corresponding Perceptions of Media Content
Werning, Stefan (2015) , S. 55-71
Since the release of iconic devices like the Nintendo DS (2004) and particularly the first iPhone (2007), touchscreen interfaces have become almost omnipresent and arguably shaped a “touch-screen generation”. But how do touchscreen experiences operate as complex assemblages of material contingencies, electronics, algorithms and user interaction? And how do they function in actual software applications? In order to address these questions, the paper outlines a comparative software studies perspective, which com-prises four consecutive steps. The introduction draws on cultural studies research on touchscreen interfaces to establish a theoretical framework for understanding the shifting epistemic status of the screen and the complex relationship between technical affordances and cognitive processes. Second, the paper explores aesthetic implications of the materiality of touchscreens, including the shift from vertical to horizontal navigational logic and the focus on physical contiguity in user experience design. Third, a series of short, interconnected case studies serves to illustrate the more specific implications on practices of media use and cultural production in a variety of applications. For example, apps like Vine evoke the ‘tangibility’ of digital material by allowing users to start and stop record-ing video by touching and releasing the screen respectively. Other, even more iconic examples include the swipe mechanic employed in Tinder and particularly the ‘swipe to unlock’ gesture used in the Android operating system. Finally, the previous findings are contextualised by briefly investigating the cultural imaginary of the touchscreen, which manifests itself in the form of haptic feedback as well as curved and even wearable touch-sensitive surfaces.
Towards an Integrated Theory of the Cyber-Urban. Digital Materiality and Networked Media at Multiple Scales
Forlano, Laura (2015) , S. 73-91
Over the past decade, scholars have worked to develop a new lexicon of the cyber-urban in order to express, in a more nuanced and careful way, the hybrid nature of everyday life in cities of the 21st century. Yet, for the most part, our current verbal and visual metaphors and imagined futures along with our theoretical and analytical frames, to a large degree, continue to emphasize the separation of the physical and the digital into discrete and hierarchical layers and ‘stacks.’ Given our limited metaphors, it should come as no surprise that we are unable to traverse socio-economic barriers and build more equitable and pluralistic cities. This paper will discuss the need to move beyond hybrid language and towards a truly integrated theory of digital materiality and the cyber-urban using examples from debates about big data, Smart Cities, the ‘internet of things’ and the quantified self.

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