addresses in particular how new media interfaces can foster a transduction be-
tween the human and the inhuman in ways not conceivable with cinema.
While both Manovich and Hansen address the interface as a new and flexible
gateway to old or new experiences either in terms of visuality or of embodi-
ment, Thomas Elsaesser thinks of interfaces“not primarily as visual, and not so
much as subject/object, inside/out, becomings or involving movement, but in-
stead instantiating invisible passages, bridges or zones, transit points or security
areas continuously upsetting the dichotomies of inside/outside, center/edge, im-
age/frame etc.”He quotes Alexander Galloway who writes:“Let me point out
that the word‘interface’has been unfortunately infected by a colloquial usage
designating screens, keyboards, controllers, and so on; I use the term instead in
the specific computer-scientific sense of an algorithmically and linguistically de-
termined bridge of inputs and outputs between two different code libraries.”
Galloway criticizes fundamentally thewhat-you-see-is-what-you-getlogic (WYSI-
WYG-logic) of the interface.“The difficulty of the WYSIWYG logic is that it is
undeniably a lie [...]. The interface lies about what it is doing in order to deliver
a more perfect experiential truth. Software knows it is true that it is false [...], it
is necessary to demonstrate that the transparency of the new and the opacity of
the old are not natural qualities of media, but are the results of socially and
historically specific processes,”Galloway writes.The interface is the result of
syntactic techniques of encoding that exist behind the interface to create specific
effects. The interface is seen as a“control allegory”;it“asks a question and, in so
doing suggests an answer.”Systems theory and algorithms become key fac-
tors in understanding this new regime of control and manipulation. In other
words, the algorithmic turn implies both a critique of the visual layer of our
culture and a new way of understanding communication and aesthetics alto-
gether. Mark B.N. Hansen, Thomas Elsaesser, Arild Fetveit, Trond Lundemo,
Ina Blom and Eivind Røssaak demonstrate different ways of navigating
through this landscape in the present collection.
The Topics
Aesthetic astonishment and reflexivity have always nurtured the still/moving
field. The increased attention toward ambiguity and playfulness at stake in the
construction of the contemporary moving image, in the commercial cinema
theatres, in art galleries and on the Web, often demonstrate a self-conscious re-
search into the histories, uses and lives of images in an expanded media field.
Part of this reflexivity appears in a renewed interest in older, even pre-cinematic
techniques, and their media archaeological relationship to new media and im-
The Still/Moving Field: An Introduction 17