“One of the biggest misunderstandings about digital information is that it is replicated identically, without loss or transformation. But anyone who works with such information knows that digital practice is constituted – like perhaps any technology – by malfunction. One has to constantly convert information in order to work with it across different platforms and softwares and on the way it is reformatted, translated, compressed or sometimes even blown up, it is enhanced or diminished: it changes. It changes its format or container or outlook or context.
Digital information is thus characterised by transformation, degradation, circulation, but also by its surprising ability to mutate and produce unpredictable results. The glitch, the bruise of the image or sound testifies to its being worked with and working; being passed on and circulated, being matter in action. History inscribes itself into the image in forms of bruises and scars. In their 1958 essay “Les Statues meurent aussi” Chris Marker and Alain Resnais write that the forces of heaven and earth are getting caught up in the scars of African statues. But all imaginable forces – aesthetic, political, technological, affective, social – are expressed by the scars of the digital image or sound. It condenses the tensions and contestations that constitute the image/sound and rip it open.”
I believe the main idea of this passage was to bring attention to the vulnerability of digital information. This concept is of interest because many people think of digital information as static or stationary, but when it is transmitted, resized, or compressed, digital information changes. It is either enhanced or diminished, losing parts of itself as it becomes malformed.
Sometimes, these changes alter the meaning of the information or how it is relayed, a phenomenon called a glitch. A malfunction in the file, a glitch can physically alter the digital information, up to the point it is unrecognizable. A glitch forms over time as the file becomes altered to be viewed by other programs, systems, or through replication.
With the Internet and the ease of sharing, a single piece of digital information containing a glitch can most likely be restored, simply by saving a new copy and deleting the old. However, a glitch may inexplicably pop up again. In a sense, digital information is “immortal” while at the same time it can become damaged irreversibly. Furthermore, I enjoy how a glitch is referred to as a bruise. Bruises show life and living, they show how something has been damaged but not destroyed. It denotes a mortal quality to the otherwise immortal concept of digital information.
Lastly, this passage reminded me of one of my favorite films, The Matrix. It depicts a dystopian, cyberpunk future in which reality as perceived by most humans is actually a simulation called “the Matrix” created by sentient machines to subdue humanity and harvest their bodies’ bioelectricity to use as a source of energy. It’s well-known that Neo (played by Keanu Reeves) is “the One” or the hero in the film. However, he also represents a glitch. Neo was a disruption or malfunction in the Matrix simulation. By the conclusion of the film trilogy, he was able to challenge the system and bring about its end, freeing humanity from the machines.