This is from an essay I’m currently writing (yes, I have to write essays too). Thought it suitably relevant that might be helpful as a ‘thinkingtool’.
Technical media are intentional recording machines that indifferently inscribe some part of the world.
Intentional means that, in practice, we understand them to be generally used at the behest of their operator. A sound recordist, cinematographer, photographer. We decide, we intend, to record.
They are recording machines because, unlike other media, they make a record of that which the machine is made to notice.
They are machines because they are assemblages of diverse materials in concert with calculations to do things.
They are technical because what they are made to notice through their diverse materials and calculations is defined or described (the difference probably matters) by these materials and their calculations. To use these machines I must rely on the agency of these machines as machines (as an assemblage calculations and materials).
One result of this is that technical media record indifferent samples. The scale (size and duration) of these samples is defined by their materials and their calculations.
