
An Aesthesia of Networks
Conjunctive Experience in Art and Technology
Anna Munster(Author)
MIT Press
Published on 17. May 2013
Book
Hardback
264 pages
978-0-262-01895-1 (ISBN)
Description
The experience of networks as the immediate sensing of relations between humans and nonhuman technical elements in assemblages such as viral media and databases.Today almost every aspect of life for which data exists can be rendered as a network. Financial data, social networks, biological ecologies: all are visualized in links and nodes, lines connecting dots. A network visualization of a corporate infrastructure could look remarkably similar to that of a terrorist organization. In An Aesthesia of Networks, Anna Munster argues that this uniformity has flattened our experience of networks as active and relational processes and assemblages. She counters the "network anaesthesia" that results from this pervasive mimesis by reinserting the question of experience, or aesthesia, into networked culture and aesthetics.Rather than asking how humans experience computers and networks, Munster asks how networks experience-what operations they perform and undergo to change and produce new forms of experience. Drawing on William James's radical empiricism, she asserts that networked experience is assembled first and foremost through relations, which make up its most immediately sensed and perceived aspect. Munster critically considers a range of contemporary artistic and cultural practices that engage with network technologies and techniques, including databases and data mining, the domination of search in online activity, and the proliferation of viral media through YouTube. These practices-from artists who "undermine" data to musicians and VJs who use intranetworked audio and video software environments-are concerned with the relationality at the core of today's network experience.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge, Mass.
United States
Publishing group
MIT Press Ltd
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Interest Age: From 18 years
Product notice
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
18 figures
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 178 mm
Thickness: 17 mm
Weight
590 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-262-01895-1 (9780262018951)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
05/2013
MIT Press
€38.99
Available for download
Person
Anna Munster is Associate Professor and a Senior Researcher at the National Institute for
Experimental Art at the University of New South Wales. She is the author of Materializing
New Media: Embodiment in Information Aesthetics.
Experimental Art at the University of New South Wales. She is the author of Materializing
New Media: Embodiment in Information Aesthetics.
Author
Associate Professor and senior researcher of the National Institute for Experimental Art at the UnivUniversity of New South Wales