A vital reckoning with how we understand the basic categories of cultural expression in the digital era
Digital and social media have transformed how much and how fast we communicate, but they have also altered the palette of expressive strategies: the cultural forms that shape how citizens, activists, and artists speak and interact. Most familiar among these strategies are storytelling and representation. In A Theory of Assembly, Kyle Parry argues that one of the most powerful and pervasive cultural forms in the digital era is assembly.
Whether as subtle photographic sequences, satirical Venn diagrams, or networked archives, projects based in assembly do not so much narrate or represent the world as rearrange it. This work of rearranging can take place at any scale, from a simple pairing of images, undertaken by one person, to the entire history of internet memes, undertaken by millions. With examples ranging from GIFs and paintings to museum exhibitions and social movement hashtags, Parry shows how, in the internet age, assembly has come to equal narrative and representation in its reach and influence, particularly as a response to ecological and social violence. He also emphasizes the ambivalence of assembly—the way it can be both emancipatory and antidemocratic.
As the world becomes ever hotter, more connected, and more algorithmic, the need to map—and remake—assembly’s powers and perils becomes all the more pressing. Interdisciplinary, engaging, and experimental, A Theory of Assembly serves as a playbook of strategies and critical frameworks for artists, activists, and content creators committed to social and environmental justice, ultimately arguing for a collective reenvisioning of which cultural forms matter.
Cover alt text: Letters from the title appear in a jumble, each colored in a blue-orange gradient. Readable title and author sits below the jumble.
In today’s digital era, women’s voices are heard everywhere—from smart home devices to social media platforms, virtual reality, podcasts, and even memes—but these new forms of communication are often accompanied by dated gender politics. In Women’s Voices in Digital Media, Jennifer O’Meara dives into new and well-established media formats to show how contemporary screen media and cultural practices police and fetishize women’s voices, but also provide exciting new ways to amplify and empower them.
As she travels through the digital world, O’Meara discovers newly acknowledged—or newly erased—female voice actors from classic films on YouTube, meets the AI and digital avatars in Her and The Congress, and hears women’s voices being disembodied in new ways via podcasts and VR voice-overs. She engages with dialogue that is spreading with only the memory of a voice, looking at how popular media like Clueless and The Simpsons have been mined for feminist memes, and encounters vocal ventriloquism on RuPaul’s Drag Race that queers and valorizes the female voice. Through these detailed case studies, O’Meara argues that the digital proliferation of screens alters the reception of sounds as much as that of images, with substantial implications for women’s voices.
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