Assembly Codes: The Logistics of Media

by John Durham Peters, Matthew Hockenberry, Nicole Starosielski, Susan Zieger

Length: 264 pages
Edition: 1
Language: English
Publisher: Duke University Press Books
Publication Date: 2021-09-10
ISBN-10: 147800973X
ISBN-13: 9781478009733
Sales Rank: #1893522 (See Top 100 Books)

The contributors to Assembly Codes examine how media and logistics set the conditions for the circulation of information and culture. They document how logistics—the techniques of organizing and coordinating the movement of materials, bodies, and information—has substantially impacted the production, distribution, and consumption of media. At the same time, physical media, such as paperwork, along with media technologies ranging from phone systems to software are central to the operations of logistics. The contributors interrogate topics ranging from the logistics of film production and the construction of internet infrastructure to the environmental impact of the creation, distribution, and sale of vinyl records. They also reveal how logistical technologies have generated new aesthetic and performative practices. In charting the specific points of contact, dependence, and friction between media and logistics, Assembly Codes demonstrates that media and logistics are co-constitutive and that one cannot be understood apart from the other.

Contributors
Ebony Coletu, Kay Dickinson, Stefano Harney, Matthew Hockenberry, Tung-Hui Hu, Shannon Mattern, Fred Moten, Michael Palm, Ned Rossiter, Nicole Starosielski, Liam Cole Young, Susan Zieger

Cover
Contents
Foreword: Some Assembly Required John Durham Peters
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Logistics of Media / Matthew Hockenberry, Nicole Starosielski, and Susan Zieger
Part I. The Logistical Imagination: Image, Sound, Subject
1. Habits of Assembly / Stefano Harney and Fred Moten
→ Storage Solutions
2. “Shipped”: Paper, Print, and the Atlantic Slave Trade / Susan Zieger
→ Losticial Magic
3. Pan-African Logistics / Ebony Coletu
→ The March of Data
4. The Pulse of Global Passage: Listening to Logistics / Shannon Mattern
Part II. Logistical Instruments: Efficiency, Automation, Interoperability
→ Beneath the Great White Way
5. Colonization’s Logistical Media: The Ship and the Document / Liam Cole Young
→ Always Already Assembled
6. “Every Man within Earshot”: Auditory Efficiency in the Time of the Telephone / Matthew Hockenberry
→ Logistical Software
7. Logistical Media Theory, the Politics of Time, and the Geopolitics of Automation / Ned Rossiter
Part III. Supply Chain Media: Digitization, Globalization, Exploitation
→ “It’s Loud and It’s Tasteless and I’ve Heard It Before”
8. Carry That Weight: The Costs of Delivery and the Ecology of Vinyl Records’ Revival / Michael Palm
→ Sound from a Music Container
9. Supply Chain Cinema, Supply Chain Education: Training Creative Wizardry for Offshored Exploitation / Kay Dickinson
→ Forklift Cinema
10. The Politics of Cable Supply from the British Empire to Huawei Marine / Nicole Starosielski
→ Who Watches the Watchers?
11. Laugh Out Loud / Tung-Hui Hu
Selected Bibliography
Contributors
Index
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
R
S
T
U
V
W
Y
Z