Nicole Starosielski
Biographic Data
| ID | 228256 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Nicole Starosielski |
| GIVEN NAMES | Nicole |
| FAMILY NAME | Starosielski |
| SIGNATURE | STAROSIELSKI N |
| AFFILIATIONS | New York University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4793-3513 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 225 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 3 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Through the haze: Data centres’ elemental aesthetics
In this photo essay, we mobilize digital media to sense elemental phenomena at the same time as we ask what ‘elements’ – what constitutive, material and fundamental substrates – enable digitally mediated sensations. Taking an infrastructural perspective, we focus on data centres as core elements that condition digital systems. We describe data centres as zones of elemental intensity where globally distributed material compositions are concentrate…
The visual culture of ‘Silicon Heartland’: Architecting agricultural past as infrastructural future
This visual essay traces the mediated production of an emergent sense of place, the ‘Silicon Heartland’, through one of its epicenters, the growing town of New Albany, Ohio. Here, visions of midwestern pastoral heritage and industrial productivity are leveraged in support of the region’s transformation into a key logistical and manufacturing hub for the global digital economy. Already home to numerous data and distribution centers, New Albany is …
Flying the skies to wire the seas: Subsea cables, remote work, and the social fabric of a media industry
Since the commercial aviation boom in the 1960s and 70s, the subsea cable industry has relied on global air travel for network development, infrastructure maintenance, and market penetration. However, COVID-19 disruptions forced a shift to remote work, challenging traditional travel practices and presenting an opportunity for carbon emission reduction. This study investigates the industry’s response to the “new normal” and its implications for mo…
ICT environmentalism and the sustainability game
Over the past three decades, corporate branding has trended strongly towards environmental conscientiousness and green rhetoric, often heralded under the term “sustainability” – a broad and mutable rhetorical strategy that not only serves industry self-interest but is mobilized by civil society actors as well. This tension is especially apparent in the information communication technologies (ICT) sector. Employing Wittgenstein’s concept of the la…
The world wide web of carbon: Toward a relational footprinting of information and communications technology's climate impacts
The climate impacts of the information and communications technology sector-and Big Data especially-is a topic of growing public and industry concern, though attempts to quantify its carbon footprint have produced contradictory results. Some studies argue that information and communications technology's global carbon footprint is set to rise dramatically in the coming years, requiring urgent regulation and sectoral degrowth. Others argue that inf…
De la représentation à l’écheveau des narrations: La part photographique de l’archéologie des réseaux
En 2015, Nicole Starosielski publiait un ouvrage essentiel pour la compréhension des processus qui sous-tendent les phénomènes de globalisation. Intitulé The Undersea Network, ce livre propose une archéologie des réseaux de câbles sous-marins, qui transportent actuellement 99 % du trafic internet entre les continents. À l’échelle de la planète, ces câbles permettent une transmission de nos courriels, appels téléphoniques, mais aussi vidéos et ima…
Assembly Codes: The Logistics of Media
The Politics of Cable Supply from the British Empire to Huawei Marine
Afterword: Infrastructural Fantasies
Media Hot and Cold
In Media Hot and Cold Nicole Starosielski examines the cultural dimensions of temperature to theorize the ways heat and cold can be used as a means of communication, subjugation, and control. Diving into the history of thermal media, from infrared cameras to thermostats to torture sweatboxes, Starosielski explores the many meanings and messages of temperature. During the twentieth century, heat and cold were broadcast through mass thermal media. …
Beyond the Sun
This article tracks solarity beyond the sun. It documents what the author calls embedded solarities, the manifestations of being solar in social practice, infrastructural assemblages, and human and non-human life. Focusing on two cases of mediating sunlight in agricultural practice-the management of chickens' reproductive cycles and the negotiation of shade for agricultural laborers-the article dismantles the classical solar subject, who simply r…
The Ends of Media Studies
This article poses the question: what are the ends of media studies? It discusses a turn to "nature" and the elements that has pushed media studies beyond its traditional objects and subjects. While the conceptualization of environments and bodies as communicative substrates offers new avenues for media research, mediation has also been taken up in a wide range of disciplinary and intellectual contexts. Rather than establishing limits or an essen…
Fiber, Fingers, and Code: Manufacturing Software and Seamlessness in the Garment Industry
This article describes how software is imagined and used to disrupt garment industry practices. Drawing from interviews, fieldwork, and discourse analysis of marketing from two companies, Stoll and Resonance, we argue that software is integral to the creation of a new kind of designer, a “digital craftsman,” that directly interfaces with a new kind of supply chain. This interaction is defined by its “seamlessness”—what we describe as both an emer…
Thermal vision
This article describes thermal vision, the ways of seeing invisible thermal emissions and exchanges. While most studies of thermal vision have focused on the deployment of infrared imaging in military and police operations, the author articulates thermal vision as a perceptual mode that both extends beyond the infrared camera to a broader set of practices of seeing heat as well as beyond the militarized view to scientific, commercial, and cultura…
Sustainable Media: Critical Approaches to Media and Environment
Introduction Janet Walker and Nicole Starosielski, Introduction: Sustainable Media Part One: Resource Media 1. Hunter Vaughan, 500,000 Kilowatts of Stardust: An Eco-Materialist Reframing of Singin' in the Rain 2. Nicole Starosielski, Pipeline Ecologies: Rural Entanglements of Fiber-Optic Cables 3. Shane Brennan, Making Data Sustainable: Backup Culture and Risk Perception 4. Colin Milburn, Ain't No Way Offa This Train: Final Fantasy VII and the Pw…
Thermocultures of Geological Media
This article documents how thermal manipulation is critical to the transformation of the earth’s raw materials into media and to maintaining those materials as media. Through an examination of thermal practices, including mineral extraction, the use of air-conditioning in media manufacturing and preservation, and thermal infrared imaging, thermal control is shown to be essential to the conversion of geological matter into circulations of media on…
Signal Traffic: Critical Studies of Media Infrastructures
The Undersea Network
in troduction ag ainst f lowUndersea fiber-optic cables are critical infrastructures that support our global network society.They transport 99 percent of all transoceanic digital communications, including phone calls, text and e-mail messages, websites, digital images and video, and even some television (cumulatively, over thirty trillion bits per second as of 2010). 1 It is submarine systems, rather than satellites, that carry most of the Intern…
Warning: Do Not Dig’: Negotiating the Visibility of Critical Infrastructures
This article highlights the visual traces of undersea cables, technologies that carry the majority of transoceanic telecommunications traffic, in order to make visible the material systems that support an ‘immaterial’ internet. The author documents the cultural production of these traces, recording how infrastructural visibility must be negotiated at points where cables cross through public spaces, including beaches, highways, and state parks. By…
Movements that are drawn’: A history of environmental animation from The Lorax to FernGully to Avatar
This article surveys the history of environmental animation and charts the aesthetic possibilities it offers for environmental representation, in order to prompt a reconsideration of indexical media’s dominant role in environmental communication. Given animation’s formal capabilities, it has the potential to depict imperceptible, indeterminate and interactive environments. Distinct representational practices have emerged in animated environmental…
Critical Nodes, Cultural Networks: Re-mapping Guam's Cable Infrastructure
Undersea communication cables are durable and cost effective infrastructures supporting the interconnection of America, Asia, and Australia. Many of these cables, which carry almost all transpacific Internet traffic, are routed through the island of Guam. Historically, more cables have landed on Guam than in either Hawai’i or California, two other major hubs for signal exchange. The cartographic representation of undersea cables, however, often a…
The Undersea Network
in troduction ag ainst f lowUndersea fiber-optic cables are critical infrastructures that support our global network society.They transport 99 percent of all transoceanic digital communications, including phone calls, text and e-mail messages, websites, digital images and video, and even some television (cumulatively, over thirty trillion bits per second as of 2010). 1 It is submarine systems, rather than satellites, that carry most of the Intern…
Thermocultures of Geological Media
This article documents how thermal manipulation is critical to the transformation of the earth’s raw materials into media and to maintaining those materials as media. Through an examination of thermal practices, including mineral extraction, the use of air-conditioning in media manufacturing and preservation, and thermal infrared imaging, thermal control is shown to be essential to the conversion of geological matter into circulations of media on…
Sustainable Media: Critical Approaches to Media and Environment
Introduction Janet Walker and Nicole Starosielski, Introduction: Sustainable Media Part One: Resource Media 1. Hunter Vaughan, 500,000 Kilowatts of Stardust: An Eco-Materialist Reframing of Singin' in the Rain 2. Nicole Starosielski, Pipeline Ecologies: Rural Entanglements of Fiber-Optic Cables 3. Shane Brennan, Making Data Sustainable: Backup Culture and Risk Perception 4. Colin Milburn, Ain't No Way Offa This Train: Final Fantasy VII and the Pw…
Warning: Do Not Dig’: Negotiating the Visibility of Critical Infrastructures
This article highlights the visual traces of undersea cables, technologies that carry the majority of transoceanic telecommunications traffic, in order to make visible the material systems that support an ‘immaterial’ internet. The author documents the cultural production of these traces, recording how infrastructural visibility must be negotiated at points where cables cross through public spaces, including beaches, highways, and state parks. By…
The world wide web of carbon: Toward a relational footprinting of information and communications technology's climate impacts
The climate impacts of the information and communications technology sector-and Big Data especially-is a topic of growing public and industry concern, though attempts to quantify its carbon footprint have produced contradictory results. Some studies argue that information and communications technology's global carbon footprint is set to rise dramatically in the coming years, requiring urgent regulation and sectoral degrowth. Others argue that inf…
Beyond the Sun
This article tracks solarity beyond the sun. It documents what the author calls embedded solarities, the manifestations of being solar in social practice, infrastructural assemblages, and human and non-human life. Focusing on two cases of mediating sunlight in agricultural practice-the management of chickens' reproductive cycles and the negotiation of shade for agricultural laborers-the article dismantles the classical solar subject, who simply r…
ICT environmentalism and the sustainability game
Over the past three decades, corporate branding has trended strongly towards environmental conscientiousness and green rhetoric, often heralded under the term “sustainability” – a broad and mutable rhetorical strategy that not only serves industry self-interest but is mobilized by civil society actors as well. This tension is especially apparent in the information communication technologies (ICT) sector. Employing Wittgenstein’s concept of the la…
Flying the skies to wire the seas: Subsea cables, remote work, and the social fabric of a media industry
Since the commercial aviation boom in the 1960s and 70s, the subsea cable industry has relied on global air travel for network development, infrastructure maintenance, and market penetration. However, COVID-19 disruptions forced a shift to remote work, challenging traditional travel practices and presenting an opportunity for carbon emission reduction. This study investigates the industry’s response to the “new normal” and its implications for mo…
Media Hot and Cold
In Media Hot and Cold Nicole Starosielski examines the cultural dimensions of temperature to theorize the ways heat and cold can be used as a means of communication, subjugation, and control. Diving into the history of thermal media, from infrared cameras to thermostats to torture sweatboxes, Starosielski explores the many meanings and messages of temperature. During the twentieth century, heat and cold were broadcast through mass thermal media. …
The Ends of Media Studies
This article poses the question: what are the ends of media studies? It discusses a turn to "nature" and the elements that has pushed media studies beyond its traditional objects and subjects. While the conceptualization of environments and bodies as communicative substrates offers new avenues for media research, mediation has also been taken up in a wide range of disciplinary and intellectual contexts. Rather than establishing limits or an essen…
Movements that are drawn’: A history of environmental animation from The Lorax to FernGully to Avatar
This article surveys the history of environmental animation and charts the aesthetic possibilities it offers for environmental representation, in order to prompt a reconsideration of indexical media’s dominant role in environmental communication. Given animation’s formal capabilities, it has the potential to depict imperceptible, indeterminate and interactive environments. Distinct representational practices have emerged in animated environmental…
Movements that are drawn’: A history of environmental animation from The Lorax to FernGully to Avatar
This article surveys the history of environmental animation and charts the aesthetic possibilities it offers for environmental representation, in order to prompt a reconsideration of indexical media’s dominant role in environmental communication. Given animation’s formal capabilities, it has the potential to depict imperceptible, indeterminate and interactive environments. Distinct representational practices have emerged in animated environmental…
Critical Nodes, Cultural Networks: Re-mapping Guam's Cable Infrastructure
Undersea communication cables are durable and cost effective infrastructures supporting the interconnection of America, Asia, and Australia. Many of these cables, which carry almost all transpacific Internet traffic, are routed through the island of Guam. Historically, more cables have landed on Guam than in either Hawai’i or California, two other major hubs for signal exchange. The cartographic representation of undersea cables, however, often a…
Warning: Do Not Dig’: Negotiating the Visibility of Critical Infrastructures
This article highlights the visual traces of undersea cables, technologies that carry the majority of transoceanic telecommunications traffic, in order to make visible the material systems that support an ‘immaterial’ internet. The author documents the cultural production of these traces, recording how infrastructural visibility must be negotiated at points where cables cross through public spaces, including beaches, highways, and state parks. By…
Signal Traffic: Critical Studies of Media Infrastructures
The Undersea Network
in troduction ag ainst f lowUndersea fiber-optic cables are critical infrastructures that support our global network society.They transport 99 percent of all transoceanic digital communications, including phone calls, text and e-mail messages, websites, digital images and video, and even some television (cumulatively, over thirty trillion bits per second as of 2010). 1 It is submarine systems, rather than satellites, that carry most of the Intern…
Sustainable Media: Critical Approaches to Media and Environment
Introduction Janet Walker and Nicole Starosielski, Introduction: Sustainable Media Part One: Resource Media 1. Hunter Vaughan, 500,000 Kilowatts of Stardust: An Eco-Materialist Reframing of Singin' in the Rain 2. Nicole Starosielski, Pipeline Ecologies: Rural Entanglements of Fiber-Optic Cables 3. Shane Brennan, Making Data Sustainable: Backup Culture and Risk Perception 4. Colin Milburn, Ain't No Way Offa This Train: Final Fantasy VII and the Pw…
Thermocultures of Geological Media
This article documents how thermal manipulation is critical to the transformation of the earth’s raw materials into media and to maintaining those materials as media. Through an examination of thermal practices, including mineral extraction, the use of air-conditioning in media manufacturing and preservation, and thermal infrared imaging, thermal control is shown to be essential to the conversion of geological matter into circulations of media on…
Thermal vision
This article describes thermal vision, the ways of seeing invisible thermal emissions and exchanges. While most studies of thermal vision have focused on the deployment of infrared imaging in military and police operations, the author articulates thermal vision as a perceptual mode that both extends beyond the infrared camera to a broader set of practices of seeing heat as well as beyond the militarized view to scientific, commercial, and cultura…
Fiber, Fingers, and Code: Manufacturing Software and Seamlessness in the Garment Industry
This article describes how software is imagined and used to disrupt garment industry practices. Drawing from interviews, fieldwork, and discourse analysis of marketing from two companies, Stoll and Resonance, we argue that software is integral to the creation of a new kind of designer, a “digital craftsman,” that directly interfaces with a new kind of supply chain. This interaction is defined by its “seamlessness”—what we describe as both an emer…
De la représentation à l’écheveau des narrations: La part photographique de l’archéologie des réseaux
En 2015, Nicole Starosielski publiait un ouvrage essentiel pour la compréhension des processus qui sous-tendent les phénomènes de globalisation. Intitulé The Undersea Network, ce livre propose une archéologie des réseaux de câbles sous-marins, qui transportent actuellement 99 % du trafic internet entre les continents. À l’échelle de la planète, ces câbles permettent une transmission de nos courriels, appels téléphoniques, mais aussi vidéos et ima…
Assembly Codes: The Logistics of Media
The Politics of Cable Supply from the British Empire to Huawei Marine
Afterword: Infrastructural Fantasies
Media Hot and Cold
In Media Hot and Cold Nicole Starosielski examines the cultural dimensions of temperature to theorize the ways heat and cold can be used as a means of communication, subjugation, and control. Diving into the history of thermal media, from infrared cameras to thermostats to torture sweatboxes, Starosielski explores the many meanings and messages of temperature. During the twentieth century, heat and cold were broadcast through mass thermal media. …
Beyond the Sun
This article tracks solarity beyond the sun. It documents what the author calls embedded solarities, the manifestations of being solar in social practice, infrastructural assemblages, and human and non-human life. Focusing on two cases of mediating sunlight in agricultural practice-the management of chickens' reproductive cycles and the negotiation of shade for agricultural laborers-the article dismantles the classical solar subject, who simply r…
The Ends of Media Studies
This article poses the question: what are the ends of media studies? It discusses a turn to "nature" and the elements that has pushed media studies beyond its traditional objects and subjects. While the conceptualization of environments and bodies as communicative substrates offers new avenues for media research, mediation has also been taken up in a wide range of disciplinary and intellectual contexts. Rather than establishing limits or an essen…
ICT environmentalism and the sustainability game
Over the past three decades, corporate branding has trended strongly towards environmental conscientiousness and green rhetoric, often heralded under the term “sustainability” – a broad and mutable rhetorical strategy that not only serves industry self-interest but is mobilized by civil society actors as well. This tension is especially apparent in the information communication technologies (ICT) sector. Employing Wittgenstein’s concept of the la…
The world wide web of carbon: Toward a relational footprinting of information and communications technology's climate impacts
The climate impacts of the information and communications technology sector-and Big Data especially-is a topic of growing public and industry concern, though attempts to quantify its carbon footprint have produced contradictory results. Some studies argue that information and communications technology's global carbon footprint is set to rise dramatically in the coming years, requiring urgent regulation and sectoral degrowth. Others argue that inf…
Through the haze: Data centres’ elemental aesthetics
In this photo essay, we mobilize digital media to sense elemental phenomena at the same time as we ask what ‘elements’ – what constitutive, material and fundamental substrates – enable digitally mediated sensations. Taking an infrastructural perspective, we focus on data centres as core elements that condition digital systems. We describe data centres as zones of elemental intensity where globally distributed material compositions are concentrate…
The visual culture of ‘Silicon Heartland’: Architecting agricultural past as infrastructural future
This visual essay traces the mediated production of an emergent sense of place, the ‘Silicon Heartland’, through one of its epicenters, the growing town of New Albany, Ohio. Here, visions of midwestern pastoral heritage and industrial productivity are leveraged in support of the region’s transformation into a key logistical and manufacturing hub for the global digital economy. Already home to numerous data and distribution centers, New Albany is …
Flying the skies to wire the seas: Subsea cables, remote work, and the social fabric of a media industry
Since the commercial aviation boom in the 1960s and 70s, the subsea cable industry has relied on global air travel for network development, infrastructure maintenance, and market penetration. However, COVID-19 disruptions forced a shift to remote work, challenging traditional travel practices and presenting an opportunity for carbon emission reduction. This study investigates the industry’s response to the “new normal” and its implications for mo…
Computer Science (11 works) · Art (10 works) · Political science (10 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Engineering (8 works) · Aesthetics (7 works) · Geographies of human-animal interactions (7 works) · Media studies (6 works) · Politics (6 works) · Telecommunications (6 works)