Abstract

The essay concerns the relationship between the notion of aura and the notion of digital image. The digital image is not simply image-of, not only mimesis of an, identifiable or not, thing or image, and so it does not have a simulacral essence. On the other hand, it is not even an icon or an original image; it is rather a genetic relational form belonging to a multiple rendering system. The digital image is not exactly “image”, but rather body-image, because it is made up of ordered sequences of binary units, or otherwise character strings developing on different levels of a syntax which builds the coincidence of these strings and the sensible appearances, at present mainly sound or visual, but generally perceptible.