The Materialities of Big Data

Within the context of big data’s near ubiquity in our lives and worlds, “The Materialities of Big Data” characterizes big data as, first and foremost, material. To articulate big data’s materiality, the author explores several material substrates of big data: specifically, its biopolitical historical context, the non-neutrality of its categorizing systems, and, turning to the theme of this volume, its energy and environmental costs. The essay concludes with a discussion of artist Ryoji Ikeda’s digital works, which open up embodied and material encounters with big data in ways that engage these aspects of big data’s materiality.