Analyses of the relationship between digital technology and art, especially in discussions of the image, normally emphasize the computer, given its impact in almost all arenas of cultural and artistic production since the 1970s. When discussed in relation to the computer, the image occupies the intersection between the technical, scientific, and artistic fields. Both the analysis and the production of images entered new territory as the image moved beyond its status as an object for art history and transformed itself into a media technology, one intimately tied to algorithms and electronic devices.1 Since this transformation, the relationship between the image and digital technology—despite the rhetoric surrounding the massive use of the digital image—has been overwhelmingly antagonistic. The computer processes symbols through binary logic, integrating calculus and logical operations into a single algorithm. These algorithms may be interpreted as logical operations of letters and numbers because both figure in the alphanumeric code. Nevertheless, images are not constituted by these codes and in this sense do not form part of the digital operating system. Images may be entered and processed by the computer only through a transformation into the sequential symbols of such a code.
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