This chapter is concerned with the relationship between objects and operations on television. The unresolved and perhaps irresolvable problem of this relationship is its asymmetry: objects are produced, and they originate in operations or even in actions. They can thus be described as the result of operations or, in more traditional terms, as reified work or crystallized action. In the case of film, for example, cinematographic operations like exposure and lighting, framing and movement, montage and mise-enscene, and sound treatment and sound design all create objects that can then function as part of a narrative (Engell and Wendler 2009; 2011). Films themselves are also the products of a sophisticated arrangement and sequence of operations (Mayer, Banks, and Caldwell 2009). Film critics devote much of their academic or discourse-analytical expertise to deconstructing not only films, but also their objects in order to trace the operations that produced them (Latour 1999, 186-194). Conversely, it is much more difficult to imagine the ways in which objects themselves generate operations or even actions – or indeed carry out these operations or actions. With a few notable exceptions, film studies has persistently ignored this topic until recently (Chion 2004).

How can objects change into operations or even actions that might then strike back at or affect them?