The Pixel Fever

Abstract

In the cinematographic industry, the standard media formats changed from film to digital formats, but these changes are not located only in art territories. Nowadays, digitalization processes are increasingly part of our daily practices. We constantly need to deal with a large range of commonplace situations that demands us to be connected with softwares applications, implying that we produce and share a considerable amount of sounds and images. For some of us, especially the younger ones, born in the 2000s, used to dealing with gadgets since the early age, mechanical and analog processes may seem to be part of a very different world. The purpose of this essay is to discuss what we are calling “the pixel fever”, this contemporary movement of our lives that merges our organic life with our digital trajectories, considering that to produce and discard digital data is already part of the routine of many of us. This essay is divided into three parts. Firstly, we aim to highlight some aspects of this entrance of digital gadgets in our lives. To do this, we start talking about the digitalization processes in the film industry focusing on the Brazilian public policy Cinema Near You, that supported this transition in movie theaters. Secondly, we move on to highlight some broader problems of this “pixel fever”: the aesthetical risk, the digitalization of jobs, and the energy consumption derived from the handling of digital materials. Finally, we conclude thinking about some parallels between these problems emphasized and our contemporary lives. With these interdisciplinary ponderations, starting by some examples from audiovisual practices, we aim to contribute to the discussions about the contemporary social changes related to digitalization processes spread in several research areas.