Aesthetics of the Virtual

B “virtual body” I mean in the first place an interactive digital image,1 the self-phenomenalization of an algorithm in binary format arising in its interaction with a user-consumer. It is a function of writing that, in its sensible appearance, at the same time exposes and conceals the translation project through which it is constituted in its computational operations. As apparition of a grammar, such a language-image [immagine­linguaggio] implies a peculiar spectrality that affects the visible-invisible relation and structures the modalities of its fruition. From this point of view, the digital image—which can be multisensory—is not simply image-of; it is not only a mimesis of that of which it is image,2 identifiable or not, and is therefore not essentially simulacrum.3 Nor, in any case, is it an icon4 or original image. on the contrary, it is a genetic-relational form that belongs to a multiple system of translation. The digital image is not, one could say, properly “image,” but imagebody [corpo­immagine], since it is made of tidy sequences of binary units, or, in other words, strings of characters that develop at various levels of a syntax that constructs the coincidence between these strings and their sensible appearances, which currently are mostly sonorous or visual but in general are perceptible.5 Now, we know that discrete sequences translate also undulating and continuous events. Therefore, as subtle body of a noncontinuous world, as discrete world of pointdata that manifest themselves as fluidities and densities and saturate perception, and as (from a computer science or formal perspective) programming language, the virtual body is certainly an electronic body and therefore an atomic aggregate (to use another metaphor). The process of digitalization renders it peculiarly light, though: as a complex made up of a sometimes remarkable amount of data transmissible with