In Listening in the Afterlife of Data, David Cecchetto theorizes sound, communication, and data by analyzing them in the contexts of practical workings of specific technologies, situations, and artworks. He shows how in a time he calls the afterlife of data-the cultural context in which data's hegemony persists even in the absence of any belief in its validity-data is repositioned as the latest in a long line of concepts that are at once constitutive of communication and suggestive of its limit. Cecchetto points to the failures and excesses of communication by focusing on the power of listening-whether through wearable technology, internet-based artworks, or the ways in which computers process sound-to pragmatically comprehend the representational excesses that data produces. Writing at a cultural moment in which data has never been more ubiquitous or less convincing, Cecchetto elucidates the paradoxes that are constitutive of computation and communication more broadly, demonstrating that data is never quite what it seems.

Book Information
ISBN 9781478015291
Author David Cecchetto
Format Hardback
Page Count 184
Imprint Duke University Press
Publisher Duke University Press
Weight(grams) 152g