Digital Seriality as Structure and Process

Abstract

The article analyzes and theorizes oftentimes overlooked phenomena of digital seriality in web-based media. Digital seriality can be located on two different levels: on the structural level of web interfaces, digital seriality concerns the web as a structure of interconnected websites, as well as the organizational forms through which the operational images of web interfaces establish, manage, and regulate these connections. On the processual level of viral autopoiesis, digital seriality denotes the forms through which images evolve and transform through sharing and spreading. This is for instance characteristic for memes as gesture-images in constant transformational becoming. While the article does not aim at describing the entirety of networks in terms of seriality, serial operations and procedures have to be understood as playing a distinct and significant role in the digital realm.

La télévision à l’ère des plateformes

“…Des études réalisées auprès de publics de sériephiles montrent toutefois la capacité des publics à contourner ces prescriptions automatisées (Delaporte, 2018 ;Dessinges et Perticoz, 2019). Enfin, parallèlement à cet intérêt pour une offre de contenus audiovisuels sans cesse renouvelée, les publics témoignent d'une volonté de renouer avec certaines expériences de visionnement passées, souvenirs qui sont de plus en plus gérés et exploités en boucle par les industries médiatiques (Niemeyer et Keightley, 2020 ;Maeder et Wentz, 2014).…”

Ruínas da cena: intersecções entre imagens políticas e as teses Sobre o conceito de história de Walter Benjamin

“…a função e os resultados de loops são uma parte integral da "serialidade digital", em que "no loop infinito da gestualidade humana e animal finalmente surge um significado" (Maeder & Wentz, 2014). […] Isso permite ao GIF apresentar uma nova narrativa fechada em si, separada da longa sequência da qual o loop é tirado: um GIF individual pode providenciar armadilha e solução, frase de efeito e afeto, ou de fato brincar com essas dinâmicas para continuamente negar ao espectador o desenlace (Miltner e Highfield, 2017, p. 6, tradução minha) 9 .…”

“…Mas os tempos atuais são tempos que articulam a base afetiva e analítica de sua metanarrativa não por meio de uma visão e esperança progressista, mas por meio de efeitos conformadores do eterno funcionamento variacional do status quo. E isso altera o alcance 9 No original: "The function and results of loops are a key part of 'digital seriality,' where 'in the infinite loops of human and animal gesture, meaning eventually surfaces' (Maeder & Wentz, 2014). […] This allows the GIF to feature a new, self-contained narrative, separate to the longer sequence from which the loop is sourced: an individual GIF can provide set-up and resolution, punch line and affect, or indeed play with these dynamics to continually deny the viewer a denouement".…”