How Electrons Remember
In this essay, Laura U. Marks looks at the material basis of electronic imaging by referencing particle physics. She argues that the analog electronic image maintains an indexical relationship to the object, and that even the digital image remains a physical object.
How Electrons Remember
By Laura U. Marks
From Millennium Film Journal No. 34 (Fall 1999): The Digital
In this essay I will argue that electronic images are the index, if not of an original object, then at least of a physical process. Without sounding too anthropomorphic, I want to suggest that electrons remember. There are two problems to be addressed. First, what is the material basis of electronic imaging? Second, is this material basis significantly different for analog and digital electronic imaging? I invite the reader to assume a subatomic empathy as we look at the life of the electrons in electronic imaging.
Electrons exemplify what Manuel De Landa calls nonorganic life. De Landa argues that supposedly inert matter, from crystals to the rocks and sand in a river bed, exhibits self-organizing behavior and even acquires experience, which entitle it to be considered nonorganic life. In effect, De Landa is arguing not that rocks are like humans so much as that humans are like rocks. Yet the reverse is implicit: he effectively rearticulates life as something that is not the sole property of organic creatures. The same nonorganic life exists at the level of subatomic particles. The memory that I attribute to electrons does not have to do with will or self-consciousness, but with an emergent self-organizing principle.
For the full article, go to mfj-online.org