Materializing digital collecting: An extended view of digital materiality

Abstract

If digital objects are abundant and ubiquitous, why should consumers pay for, much less collect them? The qualities of digital code present numerous challenges for collecting, yet digital collecting can and does occur. We explore the role of companies in constructing digital consumption objects that encourage and support collecting behaviours, identifying material configuration techniques that materialize these objects as elusive and authentic. Such techniques, we argue, may facilitate those pleasures of collecting otherwise absent in the digital realm. We extend theories of collecting by highlighting the role of objects and the companies that construct them in materializing digital collecting. More broadly, we extend theories of digital materiality by highlighting processes of digital material configuration that occur in the pre-objectification phase of materialization, acknowledging the role of marketing and design in shaping the qualities exhibited by digital consumption objects and, consequently, related consumption behaviours and experiences.