{"product_id":"the-human-in-bits-kris-cohen-9781478032090","title":"The Human in Bits: Graphical Computers, Black Abstractions","description":"In \u003cem\u003eThe Human in Bits\u003c\/em\u003e, Kris Cohen examines black abstractionist painting to demonstrate how race and computation are intimately entangled with the personal computer's graphic user interface. He shows how the personal computer and the graphical field of its screen meant to transform the human by transforming what environments humans were to labor in. It also provided the means for whiteness to tie itself to notions of colorblind meritocracy. Cohen focuses on the post-1960s experiments of black abstractionists Alma Thomas, Jack Whitten, Charles Gaines, and Julie Mehretu, who developed a nonrepresentational approach to blackness that was oriented more toward constraint than human expression. From Gaines's use of grids to Mehretu's layering of paint, these artists--in their knowledge that black life had always been conflated with numbers and bits of information--flirted with repetition, systems, and formulas to test other ways of being human. By demonstrating how these artists bypassed the white fear that the human would become interchangeable with data, Cohen reframes modernism and modernist art to account for racialization in computational cultures.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Kris Cohen\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 147803209X\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781478032090\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Duke University Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 08\/29\/2025\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 216\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.98lbs","brand":"Kris Cohen","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":46962615451903,"sku":"9781478032090","price":31.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_d334023d-6a4b-403c-9fae-8ef854ea8c9a.jpg?v=1750651997","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/the-human-in-bits-kris-cohen-9781478032090","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}