The Bitmap is the Territory: How Digital Formats Render Global Positions

Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan

doi:10.1353/mln.2021.0081

The Bitmap is the Territory: How Digital Formats Render Global Positions

Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Digital Humanities

King's College London

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

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Abstract

Digital rendering realizes a form of planetary addressability pervading screens and global GPS alike, by which a classical “scene of writing” is subsumed by a modern “scene of technical standards.” The rise of computer graphics from wartime mapping techniques and their development alongside techniques such as the global positioning system reflects an imperative to integrate vision, space, and computation around a contingent but non-fortuitous common program of spatial calculability.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	1093-1113
Number of pages	21
Journal	MLN - Modern Language Notes
Volume	136
Issue number	5
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1353/mln.2021.0081
Publication status	Published - Dec 2021

Keywords

bitmap
digital images
media theory
computer graphics
media history

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10.1353/mln.2021.0081

The Bitmap is the Territory_GEOGHEGAN_PublishedonlineDecember2021_GREEN AAMAccepted author manuscript, 907 KB

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The Bitmap is the Territory: How Digital Formats Render Global Positions

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Keywords

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