"Many authors and artists working in electronic media are exploring the concept of codework, interrogating the nature of digital artifacts as products of multilayered transcription beneath the surface level of the computer screen. Without using any words, Beiguelman's Code Movie 1 treats the hexadecimal code of JPG images as a signifier in its own right.
Author description: Code Movies are made with hex, ASCII, and
binary codes extracted from JPG images. Saved as simple text, they are
reworked and edited in Flash. They are part of a larger project I've
been working on since 2004 (//**Code_UP). The submitted work (Code Movie 1)
is made of hexa code. The project interrogates the role of the code in
meaning construction and the new forms of translations that digital
languages embody. It questions: Now that the Cybertext confuses itself
with the notion of Place (a web address, for example) and that Image
only reveals itself through a 'hyperinscription' (a URL), can we think
in a poetics of transcodification between media and file formats? Can we
keep talking about 'WYSIWYG' utopias? How does it affect our ways of
reading, seeing, and perceiving?" -- from Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 1
Experiencing the Work
Visitors interact with the piece through observation. Little input is needed from the user beyond clicking the Ruffle "play" button to begin or restart the animation, and this is available to keyboard control and other similar input. This moving-text film features black and white sans-serif characters that move and change rapidly to a soundtrack, often overlapping each other. In the process, text often becomes smaller than 12px in display size. Visitors cannot modify the speed of the characters' movement or animation. The speed of movement and animation may be considered a flashing lights hazard at times.
1 COPY IN THE NEXT
The Electronic Literature Collection Volume 1
Published in January, 2006 by Electronic Literature Organization.
The ELO gave this copy of the work to the Electronic Literature Lab in 2018.
PUBLICATION TYPE
Anthology
COPY MEDIA FORMAT
Web