Small Data is Beautiful
Small Data is Beautiful investigates the conceptual, artistic, and computational qualities of small data.
This original collection presents a challenge to discussions centred on big data – algorithms, surveillance and the datafication of human lives – by exploring the seditious and revelatory potential of radically rethinking data in creative research and practice.
Taking inspiration from the ‘small is beautiful’ mantra of the 1970s, a counter-cultural pursuit of planetary survival, the book interrogates the scale of the digital age through narratives, intimacies, representations, and ecologies. It offers a rich interdisciplinary dialogue from perspectives including cultural history, sociology, visual art, performance studies, musicology, literary studies, and data science.
‘Working across disciplines, forms and practices, Small Data is Beautiful attunes us to the significance of the micro in a globalised and increasingly digitised world where scale and “bigness” rule. This wide-ranging and imaginative book examines what small implies for questions of quality, generalisation, intimacy, subjectivity and the ephemeral. In so doing, it invites us to explore what data are and might be, and why our research methodologies and approaches matter – politically, ethically and aesthetically.’
Professor Rebecca Coleman, Bristol University
Format: Paperback
Extent: 334pp
ISBN: 9780645481327
Pub date: 12 December 2023
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