Never alone, except for now : art, networks, populations / Kris Cohen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cohen, Kris, 1972- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Art and the Internet.

Art and society.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (200 pages, 16 pages of plates) : color illustrations, photographs

Place of Publication:

Durham : Duke University Press, 2017.

Summary:

How is it that one can be connected to a vast worldwide network of other people and places via digital technologies and yet also be completely alone? Kris Cohen tackles this philosophical question in Never Alone, Except for Now by exploring how contemporary technologies are changing group formations and affiliations within social life. He identifies a new form of collectivity that exists between publics, which are built through conscious acts, and populations, which are automatically constructed through the collection of Big Data. Finding traditional liberal concepts of the public sphere and neoliberal ideas of populations inadequate on their own to examine these new forms of sociality, Cohen places familiar features of the web—such as emoticons, trolling, and search engines—in conversation with artworks by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, William Gibson, Sharon Hayes, and Thomson & Craighead to more precisely articulate the affective and aesthetic experiences of living between publics and populations. This liminal experience—caught between existing as a set of data points and as individuals newly empowered to create their own online communities—explains, Cohen contends, how one is simultaneously alone and connected in ways never before possible.

Contents:

Group form

Between publics and populations

Broken genres

Toneless

Search engine subjectivities.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780822372509

0822372509

OCLC:

982397928