FCJ-148 Affect and the Medium of Digital Data.

Adam Nash. RMIT University, Melbourne. Figure 1: Screenshot from *Autoscopia* by Justin Clemens, Christopher Dodds, Adam Nash, 2009-present: generated portrait of Adam Nash.
Image and permissions provided by Adam Nash. Introduction This paper attempts a technical analysis of the medium of digital data to establish how affect may emerge in that medium. Two central questions here are, first, whether it is possible for two immanently digital entities to establish an affect cycle with each other, and, second, how this relates to affect cycles established between digital data and non-digital entities? It should be possible to build artworks that can test certain of their own intrinsic properties in both these respects. The author had a hand in creating some such artworks, and these are examined later in this paper. [1] The constant movement of data in a process of modulation, demodulation and remodulation is one of the defining characteristics of the digital…

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