Glossary

Agency (Fr. agentivité): A neologism in French, borrowed from the English agency. In general terms, it designates the capacity of an entity to act upon its environment. In this research, the term is used in association with matter, and is meant to convey the idea of an active matter, inhabited by potentials waiting to be activated, whose limits and specificities will be decisive in the system in which this matter, transformed or not, will take part.

Algorithmic core (Fr. noyau algorithmique): In a creative process whose formal production is based on digital tools, the specific technical element in which this production takes place, whether an algorithm, a graphical interface (with an underlying algorithm), a neural network, or a combination of these elements. The algorithmic core is to be thought of topologically. For example, an image can be considered to be inside the algorithmic core as long as it is apprehended through its I,J coordinates and color values; as soon as it is spatialized (on a screen, in a projection or on paper), however, it transcends the algorithmic core and enters the analog periphery. The uncertainties within the algorithmic core are expressed through the actualization of the algorithmic virtual.

Algorithmic gesture (Fr. geste algorithmique): An artistic gesture within a creative process based on digital means, but specifically directed at an algorithm or a graphical user interface (GUI), the latter being understood as a spatial arrangement of algorithmic functions.

Algorithmic virtual (Fr. virtuel algorithmique): In this research, a real potential, the source of unpredictable forms that are not yet actualized. The algorithmic virtual resides within the algorithmic core, but can also be expressed in the protocol zone. It begins its actualization by becoming form in a non-productive way (by resemblance) within the core, and then fully actualizes itself in an embodied (and productive) way, that is, through its effect on the artist’s consciousness, in an affective process that depends on perception.

Analog periphery (Fr. pourtour analogique): In a creative process whose formal production is based on digital tools, everything that is part of the creative environment but does not function digitally. Everything related to the spatial arrangement of images, for example, belongs to the analog periphery. Any analog signal fed into the algorithm, and/or any data coming from the Internet, is to be understood as part of the analog periphery. The uncertainties within the analog periphery are expressed through the actualization of the analog virtual, just as in a pre-digital practice, and just as in the real world outside artistic creation.

Analog virtual (Fr. virtuel analogique): In this research, a real potential, the source of unpredictable forms that are not yet actualized. The analog virtual resides at the level of the analog periphery, but can also be expressed in the protocol zone. It begins its actualization by becoming form in a divergent and productive way, and then fully actualizes itself in an embodied way, that is, through its effect on the artist’s consciousness, in an affective process that depends on perception.

Artistic gesture (Fr. geste artistique): A gesture that succeeds in decisively transforming a work of art in the course of its making.

Assemblage (Fr. agencement): A heterogeneous whole made up of diverse parts – material, technical, human, discursive, normative, territorial elements… –, parts whose nature does not depend on their interconnection with the other parts of the whole, as would follow from a holistic approach in which the parts constitute one another. The properties of assemblages, however, cannot be deduced from those of their parts, as would have been the case in a reductionist logic. Assemblages can undergo processes of deterritorialization and reterritorialization, which destabilize and restabilize the identity of the assemblage.

Assembly language (Fr. assembleur): The lowest-level programming language (the closest to the computer) that can be understood by a human being. In the stack of programming languages, it is the least abstract, just above binary language, and it is specific to each machine. This language makes fine control of memory, registers and processor operations possible.

Computing machine (Fr. machine-ordinateur): A term frequently used by Gilbert Simondon to refer to computers. The term suits this research because it serves as a reminder that the computer is first and foremost a machine, a reminder from which emerges the idea of a continuity within technical evolution. This continuity provides a relevant framework when it comes to weighing the expressions of the digital arts.

Concretization (Fr. concrétisation): In Simondon’s thought, the process by which technical objects evolve “in a manner analogous to living beings,” passing from an “abstract” state to a “concrete” state. During concretization, the “internal resonance” of the technical object increases, and the object tends to become multifunctional. In the case of machines, concretization takes the form of individuation. At the level of technical ensembles, it is a matter of their “naturalization,” the last stage of concretization¹.

Databending: A digital creation technique that consists in modifying the data structure of an image or a sound, through various procedures, which has the effect of deforming the original image or sound. In this research, Rosa Menkman’s work A vernacular of file formats (2012) illustrates the application of this technique.

Datamoshing: A digital creation technique that consists in modifying the internal structure of a compressed video, notably by removing an “I” frame (containing all the pixel information) between two different sequences, after which the motion information of the first sequence is transferred onto the color data of the sequence that follows it, deforming the moving image in a characteristic way.

Destructurations (works of the type; Fr. déstructurations): In this research, artistic approaches that operate by exploiting or provoking errors in the computer system. These malfunctions mainly concern the symbolic level of the code or the underlying physical substrate, but destructuration can also concern symbolic or discursive levels. Works of this type are examined in the central chapter.

Deterritorialization / Reterritorialization (Fr. déterritorialisation / reterritorialisation): Movements that can affect an assemblage, within the conceptual framework established by Félix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze. In this research, these movements can take place during the artistic creative process, understood as an assemblage. Still within this research, and in terms that would not be free of a certain transcendence, these movements can be understood as a displacement, from an initial ground towards another ground once the work has been produced. In more immanent terms, which this research has preferred, these movements are to be interpreted as a significant restructuring of the local ground, carried out during the creative process in which the artistic gesture is expressed.

Differing times (Fr. temps différants): Times that allow for delay effects and pauses, which can be associated with the gestation of knowledge, times that can be lived by human beings. Bernard Stiegler opposes differing times to light-times. While light-times (indebted to flows) are machinic and alienating, differing times (linked to traces) are closer to human temporalities.

Digital gesture (Fr. geste numérique): An artistic gesture within a creative process based on digital means.

Enaction (Fr. énaction): The process through which the intelligence of the individual and the world around it arise simultaneously, in the dynamic coupling between the organism and its environment, on the basis of its embodied experience. Enaction was theorized, in the wake of Merleau-Ponty, by Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson and Eleanor Rosch, in The Embodied Mind (1991), translated into French as L’inscription corporelle de l’esprit (1993).

Entropy (Fr. entropie): A thermodynamic property that indicates the level of disorder in a material system. The term was introduced in 1865 by the physicist R. J. Clausius from a Greek word meaning “action of transforming oneself².” The higher the level of entropy, the less the system in question is able to provide useful work. The second law of thermodynamics states that, globally, in transformations of any kind, overall entropy can only increase. The structuring of living beings — and, according to Gilbert Simondon, that of the machine under certain conditions — can nevertheless contribute to a local reduction of entropy.

Extratechnicity (Fr. extratechnicité): In this research, extratechnicity is to be understood, following Simondon, as an aspect that alters and distorts the “pure” evolution of the technical element – be it an object, an individual, an ensemble or a network – owing to human intentions that apprehend the technical element as a commodity and/or as a means of domination.

Flickering: A visual effect in a video or a film, analog or digital, consisting of very rapid changes of images, which appears above all in certain registers of experimental cinema and video art.

Gesture (Fr. geste): “A gesture is a movement of the body, or of a tool connected to the body, for which there is no satisfactory causal explanation³.”

Glitch: A visible malfunction in the frame of the digital image (still or moving), causing it to tear, and/or the appearance of artifacts in the form of pixelated or frozen areas. It can be an ephemeral effect or affect the image permanently. The glitch can be spontaneous, often associated with a hardware or software malfunction, or it can result from databending or datamoshing operations.

Hypermaterial (Fr. hypermatériel): A term proposed by Bernard Stiegler to designate the physical substrate that acts as the support of the digital. This research specifies the conditioning of the hypermaterial, by stating that it is a composite hardware, including every kind of computer memory, ephemeral or not. In the characteristics of the hypermaterial lie the reasons why the digital can be expressed as flow but also as trace.

Iconosphere (Fr. iconosphère): The universe of images circulating on the Internet, which users may or may not be able to access. In other words, the visual component of big data.

Individuation: The process of genesis of any individual, inorganic or living, technical, human and/or social, central to the thought of Gilbert Simondon. Individuation operates from an original, preindividual level, saturated with potentials, metastable. Individuation produces the individual together with its associated milieu, in a continuous process punctuated by a succession of metastable states. In individuation, every individual produced carries with it a part of the preindividual level from which it comes. It is by drawing on this preindividual content that any individual can extend its process of individuation.

Intention-image (Fr. intention-image): A notion inspired by the thought of Gilbert Simondon, for whom it is the mental image that precedes the act of invention. In this research, it lies at the center of artistic intentionality. It is a mental image endowed with a plasticity which, just like the mental image described by Simondon, is a “bundle of motor tendencies, a long-term anticipation of the experience of the object; in the course of the interaction between the organism and the milieu, it becomes a system for receiving incident signals and allows perceptual-motor activity to be exercised in a progressive mode⁴.”

Interface (graphical user interface, GUI): A graphical on-screen configuration that may include virtual buttons, menus, text fields, etc., and can be used for various tasks. In this research, the interface is understood as a spatial arrangement of algorithmic functions. It differs from the algorithm in that it is less flexible and more constrained, but under certain conditions it makes it easy to carry out tasks that can be difficult to perform by manipulating the algorithm directly. From a conceptual point of view, interfaces seem to us to work on the reticulation of the medium with a greater reach than algorithms, but also in a less supple and less fine-grained way.

Light-time (Fr. temps-lumière): Hyper-fast, algorithmic, disruptive times, associated with the circulation of calculable information, proper to the digital, which take place at microscopic scales but are expressed at the macro scale and can spill over into the real outside the digital. Bernard Stiegler opposes light-times to differing times. While light-times (indebted to flows) are machinic and alienating, differing times (linked to traces) allow for delay and are more human.

Mashup: A practice that consists in creating a video from pre-existing video or sound fragments, found on the Internet or elsewhere, in an approach inspired by the found footage of the cinematic avant-garde.

Media archaeology (Fr. archéologie des média, “média” being understood as the plural of “médium”): A field of research that proposes to approach media within the framework of “broadened definitions and temporalities⁵,” able to overcome the epistemological partitions between tools and practices, often erected by “disciplines” and by discourses centered on phenomena of rupture. Media archaeology “obstinately questions the materiality of the apparatuses that, for millennia, have allowed us to record, transmit and process the sensory and informational data offered to our attention⁶.”

Medium (pl. media; Fr. médium): A term used by artistic modernity to refer to painting, sculpture, photography, etc. More generally, the term designates the environment, not only material but also concerning the methods, tools, etc., used by an artistic discipline. In a now outdated conception, the art critic Clement Greenberg argued that it was up to each discipline to find the specificities of its medium and to express itself accordingly. Outside the Greenbergian logic, this research could not do without the term medium, which shows a remarkable discursive operativity, for lack of an alternative term (the use of the term hypermedium was considered, then set aside). The use of the term in this research is to be understood as the will not to lose sight, when thinking about processes of all kinds, of the agency of matters, materials, hardware, dispositifs, etc. The research indirectly grants a certain consistency to the idea of a “digital medium,” all the more so since a “hypermaterial” support has been identified for it, although the notion has not been problematized as such.

Negentropy (Fr. néguentropie): Relating to a reduction of entropy. See Entropy.

Ontogenesis (Fr. ontogenèse): The genesis of the individual (human or technical) within its own temporality.

Operational images (Fr. images opérationnelles): A term introduced by Harun Farocki in his video Eye/Machine (2001) to designate images whose purpose is neither to entertain nor to inform⁷. Farocki was mainly referring to machines used to command other machines, including war machines, as well as surveillance images and images used to monitor industrial machines. This research, echoing media archaeology, proposes a “broadened definition” of this category, since today all digital images are potentially operational: they take part in various operations, more or less discreet or invisible, but with a definite impact — marketing operations, information gathering, attention capture, etc. Moreover, any digital image displayed on a screen that can receive actions — buttons, menus, text fields —, that is, most websites on the Internet as well as all software interfaces, can benefit from being considered as an operational image, and in fact is one sensu stricto.

Pharmakon: A key notion in Bernard Stiegler’s thought. In ancient Greek, as the vocabulary of Ars Industrialis tells us in its entry pharmakon, “the term pharmakon designates at once the remedy, the poison and the scapegoat⁸.” As used by Stiegler, this notion means that every technical element, like remedies in medicine, can have a positive effect (remedy) or a negative effect (poison). It serves as a reminder that every technical expression carries advantages intertwined with drawbacks, emancipating effects combined with alienating effects — aspects that, in general, manifest themselves neither at the same time nor in the same way —, and that it is always a balance to be problematized and constantly reassessed. The notion of pharmakon thus offers a more realistic alternative to the simplifying discourses that see in technics only positive effects (technophilia) or negative ones (technophobia).

Phylogenesis (Fr. phylogenèse): The process of genesis of a species, which unfolds over the long term.

Preindividual (Fr. préindividuel): In the thought of Gilbert Simondon, a fundamental, primitive level, which is the source of the process of individuation that produces the individual (living or not), a process at the heart of the philosopher’s conceptual system. Every individual (technical, human, social…) individuates itself from a preindividual level, while carrying with it a remanence of this preindividual level, thanks to which it will be able to pursue its individuation.

Prepolitical (Fr. prépolitique): In this research, the prepolitical is to be understood as a reflection whose object is neither the possible systems of social organization (capitalism, communism, liberal democracy, social democracy, etc.) nor the strategies aimed at establishing or preserving them, but rather an attention paid to the conditions of emancipation and alienation that affect human beings individually and collectively.

Reterritorialization: See Deterritorialization.

Spatialized image (Fr. image spatialisée): An image once it is displayed on a screen, projected, or printed on paper or another support.

Streaming: Viewing a video from a stream coming from the Internet, generally within an interface that is part of a website.

Structurations (works of the type; Fr. structurations): In this research, artistic approaches mobilizing digital means, in which forms are produced without resorting to errors of the computer system. These approaches work by simply exploiting the programmability of the computing machine. Works of this type are examined in the central chapter.

Technics (Fr. technique): Any artificial element, of obvious materiality (tool, machine, instrument) or of less concrete materiality (know-how, methods, procedures), that human beings use and that mediates their relationship with the world.

Technology (Fr. technologie): In this research, the term technology may be used to refer to modern technics, associated with electronics and/or computers, but even in this context the term remains equivalent to technics. Indeed, once we consider that the notion of information has no consistency of its own, and that we should rather think of informed matter, we cannot subscribe to the view that associates technics with the transformation of matter while technology would be oriented towards the modulation of information. Nor does this research adopt, although without contesting it, the meaning of the term in the lineage of Simondon and Stiegler, who associate the term technology with “discourse on technics.”

Topological image (topological structure of the image; Fr. image topologique): An image whose structure is expressed through its I,J coordinates and the color values (RGB) of its pixels. It is a non-spatialized image.

Transcoding (Fr. transcodage): A process that appears with digital technologies, through which images, sounds and texts can be transformed into one another. This is because the three entities, once encoded, share the same coding system, binary code.

Transductive relation (Fr. relation transductive): The co-evolution of two or more entities, during which each entity, as it evolves (according to the process of individuation described by Gilbert Simondon), produces new structures that will condition those produced by the other entities belonging to the system. Through this relation, which Bernard Stiegler puts forward on the basis of the work of André Leroi-Gourhan and the thought of Gilbert Simondon, Stiegler explains the evolution of the human species in connection with technics.

Transindividuation: A collective process of individuation, that is, the fundamental process of genesis as it emerges from the thought of Gilbert Simondon, when it affects two or more entities.

Transmediality (Fr. transmédialité): The quality of a work when it includes elements belonging to different media (image, sound, text, physical objects, website, etc.).

1. Adapted, with slight modifications, from Jean-Hugues Barthélémy, «Glossaire Simondon : Les 50 grandes entrées dans l’œuvre ». Appareil [en ligne]. 2015, vol. 16.↩︎

2. See the entry for entropie in the dictionary of the Centre national de ressources textuelles et lexicales, URL: https://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/entropie, accessed 3 November 2024.↩︎

3. Vilém Flusser, Gestures, op. cit., p. 2.↩︎

4. Gilbert Simondon, Imagination et invention, op. cit., p. 3.↩︎

5. Jussi Parikka, Qu’est-ce que l’archéologie des média ?, op. cit., prologue.↩︎

6. Ibid.↩︎

7. Harun Farocki, “Phantom Images,” in Public, op. cit., p. 17.↩︎

8. In: Ars Industrialis, Pharmakon [en ligne]. 2009. disponible à l'adresse : https://arsindustrialis.org/pharmakon#sdfootnote1sym.↩︎