1. Digital culture is conflated with technical processes occurring behind interfaces like buffering, streaming, and interruptions in data transmission. 2. The concept of a continuous "now" presented through streaming data obscures the underlying logic of digital networks which operate through absence and presence of data transmission rather than a true stream. 3. An accurate understanding of temporality in digital culture requires considering how code interactions reconfigure notions of time and the multiple realities exhibited by different logics, rhythms, pauses and timescales across sites.

1. Executing Liveness
2 Dec, 2016 @ Digital Culture, Aarhus University
Winnie Soon | artist-researcher | www.siusoon.net

2. Img src: https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/kultur/northside/traet-af-valgkamp-dr-bringer-det-
bedste-fra-northside-direkte-til-dig

3. Img src: http://solonoche.com

4. Img src: https://i.stack.imgur.com/

6. Img src: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/-GvbPWWc5Xc/hqdefault.jpg

8. Img src: http://cdn01.androidauthority.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/cloud-storage.jpg

9. liveness is a conflation of many concepts, and has no
single, fixed definition beyond a vague sense of
immediacy and 'nowness'.
(Newell, 2009, p. 13)

10. Liveness in digital culture

11. Data is constantly perceived as a stream (Berry, 2011,
2012, 2013; Fuller, 2003), indicating its
characteristics of vast volume, speed of update,
continuous flow and delivery. The concept of streams
now characterises the internet rather than web
pages (Berry, 2011, p. 143). Data streams indicate
events that are regarded as the latest and
instantaneous versions. The now that we experience
through perceptible streams is entangled with
computational logics.
(Soon, 2016)

12. Continuity / Flow / Stream

17. http://image.syracuse.com/home/syr-media/width620/img/news/photo/2014/09/10/15811588-mmmain.png

21. The network structure of today’s communication channels
and of their information stream is often understood as
providing a direct connection between users and services or
between two communication partners, even though there
cannot be any direct connections on digital networks. The
metaphor of the flow conceals the fact that, technically,
what is taking place is quite the opposite. There is no stream
in digital networks.
(Sprenger, 2015, pp. 88-9)

22. Principle organization of a playback buffer. Reprinted from Internetworking: Technological Foundations and
Applications (p. 783), by Christoph Meinel & Harald Sack, 2013, Berlin: Springer. Copyright 2013 by Springer.

23. when a stream of data is sent via a distributed internet
network the logic of buffering and data processing are
constantly performed through the presence and absence
of data. A display of a throbber presents […] a reality
that is conflated with invisible material infrastructures
and interruptions as well as the absence of material
substrates.
(Soon, 2016)

24.  How does the temporality of code inter-actions reconfigure our understanding of digital culture?
 How might we begin to discuss digital culture in a different way?
Winnie SOON | Ph.D Fellow | www.siusoon.net
School of Communication and Culture
The Center for Participatory IT

25. The Spinning Wheel of Life ( work-in-progress)

26. Take away

27. 1/ Digital culture is conflated with technical and operative processes

28. 1/ Digital culture is conflated with technical and operative processes
2/ You are encouraged to think beyond and behind interfaces.

29. 1/ Digital culture is conflated with technical and operative processes
2/ You are encouraged to think beyond and behind interfaces.
3/ The ‘now’ is a rendered snapshot, presenting multiple realities that
lie at the heart of time-dependent logics and these logics exhibit
different rates, tempos, pauses and rhythms at multiple sites and
scales.