Codecs: Encoding/decoding images and sounds

Codecs pose numerous analytical problems for software scholars. They are mathematically deep. Coming to grips with them may entail lengthy immersion in technical details. Although they are responsible for displaying many moving images on screens today, codecs themselves often hide in hardware and lower-level code. They come to light occasionally, usually in the form of an error message saying that something is missing: the right codec has not been installed. Despite or perhaps because of their convoluted obscurity, they catalyze new relations between people, things, spaces and times in events and forms.