{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"4f7053d9-6508-49c8-9dd8-ec4dc5dadd53","title":"Bodies in code  interfaces with digital media","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"0415970164","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"4f7053d9-6508-49c8-9dd8-ec4dc5dadd53","id":"4f7053d9-6508-49c8-9dd8-ec4dc5dadd53","uuid":"4f7053d9-6508-49c8-9dd8-ec4dc5dadd53","title":"Bodies in code  interfaces with digital media","normalized_title":"bodiesincodeinterfaceswithdigitalmedia","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"0415970164","isbns":["0415970164","0415970156","9780415970167","9780415970150"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":348,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/4f7053d9-6508-49c8-9dd8-ec4dc5dadd53","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Bodies%20in%20code%20%20interfaces%20with%20digital%20media","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/4f7053d9-6508-49c8-9dd8-ec4dc5dadd53/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/4f7053d9-6508-49c8-9dd8-ec4dc5dadd53/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/4f7053d9-6508-49c8-9dd8-ec4dc5dadd53","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/4f7053d9-6508-49c8-9dd8-ec4dc5dadd53/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/4f7053d9-6508-49c8-9dd8-ec4dc5dadd53/search"},"page":{"printed_page":232,"pdf_page":245,"physical_index":245,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"4107079fdd1aaeaa5ee5b5973adf04ced6503ea921b80e20ae365aec713ccffe"},"chapter":"bodies in code","content":"2. MEDIA\n\nMuch more than just a thematic focal point, the impossible house that is larger inside than outside plays the role of catalyst for the events and actions that transpire within the novel. More than just a motor for narration, it triggers a media agon in which print's capacity to mimic technical orthographic recording attests not only to its flexibility, but also-far more significantly in my opinion-to its special aptitude for documenting\" the nondocumentable impact of the digital. Even as it reconfigures the novel from story-telling vehicle to interface onto a virtually limitless universe of information, the thematization of mediation serves first and foremost to foreground the paradoxical privilege enjoyed by print in today's new media ecology.\n\nConsider, as an initial example, how the house jumpstarts the narrative: only once the house's peculiar spatial properties are discovered in Chapter IV do film and text acquire a plot. Prior to this moment, the void of narration had been filled by Zampanò's description of some altogether innocuous documentary footage from the daily lives of the Navidsons in their new house on Ash Tree Lane.xii Abruptly puncturing this static picture, the discovery of the house's transformation triggers a frenzied proliferation of recording that will drive the plot of film and text from this point forward. It is hardly insignificant that this proliferation occurs in direct response to a failure of technical orthography—the failure of ubiquitous Hi-8 video surveillance cameras to capture the house's uncanny transformation.xiii Indeed, this plot-instigating incident puts into play an odd logic that will recur throughout the narrative: rather than leading to a disinvestment in technical recording, as we might expect from such a bizarre event, orthographic failure will, time and again, only intensify orthographic desire.\n\nYet, even as it literally sets off an escalating multiplication of layers of mediation, this odd logic will also cause the relation between text and technical recording to evolve in ways that speak directly to the changing status of the literary in the new media ecology. As the resistance of the house to orthographic capture yields an ever more complex deployment of technical mediation (to the point where, in Exploration #4, photography, film, video, surveillance video, and sound recording are all deployed together), the text undergoes a kind of internal functional division. On the one hand, its apparent seduction by this escalating orthographic frenzy causes it to join the fray and demonstrate its flexibility as a form of media capable of mimicking other media; on the other hand, it differentiates itself from technical recording in what amounts to an assertion of the novel's privilege within today's complex media ecology. House of Leaves shows itself—and therewith the novel as such—to be the appropriate vehicle for documenting the incapacity of orthographic recording technology to document the impossible house—that is, the being of the digital that, as Friedrich Kittler says, today determines our experience.\n\nBODIES IN CODE\n\n232","previous_page":231,"next_page":233}