The invisibilities of code and aesthetics of redaction

The material turn in critical approaches to contemporary media, games and art presents an impetus to go even deeper to the underlying logical and technical architecture of the digital: code. Whilst code may be as routinely obscured, by commercial and scholarly focus on more visible interfaces, as it is pervasive, we caution against the tendency to position code as a magical solution. Code, we argue, only executes in a way that is always composite and transversal, reliant upon and drawing into relation a vast network of actors and materialities, across multiple levels and forms. The papers that comprise this special issue take up the analytical challenge this suggests, addressing code in relation to topics ranging from material computing, digital heritage, gestural gaming, platform labour and the digitality of text, to DDoS attacks, the spatiality of ARGs, video game engrossment and the intimacy of white lines. Against this backdrop, this introductory essay frames the complex materialities and in/visibilities of code. We argue that code, in its semiotic and technical senses alike, both enables and obscures - in fact, it conveys often through forms of masking and erasure. We thus position code as a negative-yet-generative force, through a study of the politics and aesthetics of redaction. Code emerges as an analytical figure able to diagram forms of connection and tessellation, but also negation and erasure, within material, technological and cultural assemblages.