ABSTRACT
Traditionally, images were analogue in nature. That is, they consisted of physical marks and signs of some kind carried by material surfaces. The marks and signs are virtually inseparable from these surfaces. They are also continuously related to some perceivable features of the object which they represent. The light, for instance, cast across a rough wooden table top becomes an analogous set of tonal differences in the emulsion of the photograph. Digitisation is also the effective precondition for the entry of photographic images into the flow of information which circulates within the contemporary global communications network. It is their translation into a numerical code that now enables them to be electronically transmitted. For certain reasons, questions have arisen about the place of images in time and space, where they can be said to actually exist, about how and where they are stored when in electronic form, how and by whom they can be accessed, used, owned and controlled.
