signal and media

I’m trying to get a handle on how discrete media (ie: film) is translated to signal. WHat is the history of this? Is discrete media something we can understand? is granular synthesis discrete? what about analog signal, isn’t breaking a signal up into regular clips analogous to frames? When is data a signal?

• transcoding
• telecine
• serializing

how does chopping up the signal translate into frames? If you could look at a signal what would you see? audio is a direct signal, there’s no mapping of signal levels to other levels or variations. in the case of digital media the signal variation is being sampled for levels above or below threshold. these are serialized and data matrices are derived for further translation and interpretation.

control signal sets the envelope. not unlike headers, they give instructions for interpreting the signal (or to the reconstitution mechanism).

even computers operate on clock cycles, which is another kind of signal.