Ears in the Cloud: Fantasies of Networked Perception.

This article examines Cloud (2017), a sound art installation by Christina Kubisch that aims to make digital infrastructure audible. In works such as this one and the similar Electrical Walks series, Kubisch employs custom-built headphones that transform electromagnetic energy into sound, allowing li...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Publicado en:October no. 193; pp. 113 - 133
Autor principal: Burson, Harry
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: MIT Press Summer2025
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Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
Descripción
Sumario:This article examines Cloud (2017), a sound art installation by Christina Kubisch that aims to make digital infrastructure audible. In works such as this one and the similar Electrical Walks series, Kubisch employs custom-built headphones that transform electromagnetic energy into sound, allowing listeners to hear the operation of the otherwise imperceptible network technologies of cloud computation. I consider Kubisch's approach within the field of sound art and the legacy of John Cage and R. Murray Schafer that privilege hearing as a revelatory sense through which individuals can best perceive their embodied relationship to the physical environment. I argue that Cloud is indicative of a recent tendency to emphasize and figure the power of hearing to apprehend invisible systems of network infrastructures as exemplified in phenomenological and affective theories of digital media. I examine the shared conceptual lineage linking notions of aural and digital cultures in the crisis of visuality that was central to postmodern thought.