Coined by the renowned German filmmaker, artist, and writer Harun Farocki, the term “operational images” appeared in the early 2000s in his video installation trilogy Eye/Machine I-III (2001–3), which investigates autonomous weapon systems, machine vision in industrial and other applications, and the broader move from representations to the primacy of operations. Farocki’s film installation series presents this shift as a particular kind of image that emerges in those institutional practices, although it also articulates the shift through the various histories and spaces that condition both the emergence of such images and their industrial base: these include military test facilities, archives, laboratories, and factories.

Can one reduce the digital to an analog apparatus? Of course. There are endless clumsy ways to reduce mind to body and body to mind. I am contesting whether we ought to make such a reduction. And if we ought not, then historicism and empiricism shouldn’t be primary methods in digital studies. Anathema, I know, but that’s why it’s important to scrutinize methodology.