Matter of Time: Toward a Materialist Semiotics of Web Animation

This essay argues for greater critical attention to the impact of particular development environments and programming languages on the aesthetic forms of new media productions. Examining two examples of Internet-based motion graphics for the ways they have been optimized for web delivery, the author attempts to show that medium-specific coding and design strategies in digital literature set up another signifying surface that intersects with the manifest text on the screen. In this material dimension of the text's signification, we can read the marks of the small- and large-scale technical systems in which the artwork is embedded.

(Source: Author's abstract)