Digital Seriality as Structure and Process

Abstract

The article analyzes and theorizes oftentimes overlooked phenomena of digital seriality in web-based media. Digital seriality can be located on two different levels: on the structural level of web interfaces, digital seriality concerns the web as a structure of interconnected websites, as well as the organizational forms through which the operational images of web interfaces establish, manage, and regulate these connections. On the processual level of viral autopoiesis, digital seriality denotes the forms through which images evolve and transform through sharing and spreading. This is for instance characteristic for memes as gesture-images in constant transformational becoming. While the article does not aim at describing the entirety of networks in terms of seriality, serial operations and procedures have to be understood as playing a distinct and significant role in the digital realm.