Systems Ultra explores how we experience complex systems: the mesh of things, people, and ideas interacting to produce their own patterns and behaviours.

What does it mean when a car which runs on code drives dangerously? What does massmarket graphics software tell us about the workplace politics of architects? And, in these human-made systems, which phenomena are designed, and which are emergent? In a world of networked technologies, global supply chains, and supranational regulations, there are growing calls for a new kind of literacy around systems and their ramifications. At the same time, we are often told these systems are impossible to fully comprehend and are far beyond our control.

Drawing on field research and artistic practice around the industrial settings of ports, air traffic control, architectural software, payment platforms in adult entertainment, and car crash testing, Georgina Voss argues that complex systems can be approached as sites of revelation around scale, time, materiality, deviance, and breakages. With humour and guile, she tells the story of what ‘systems’ have come to mean, how they have been sold to us, and the real-world consequences of the power that flows through them.

Systems Ultra goes beyond narratives of technological exceptionalism to explore how we experience the complex systems which influence our lives, how to understand them more clearly, and, perhaps, how to change them.

The idea of 'pornography' is often employed to invoke titillation, anger, and disgust. Stigma and the Shaping of the Pornography Industry explores the effects that this stigmatized identity has on the pornography industry itself. From the video era to the emergence of the internet, to trade shows, white-collar workers, technological innovation, and industry-wide characteristics, this book looks beyond content production to explore how stigma has shaped the structures, practices, norms, and boundaries of the wider sector. By drawing on concepts such as dirty work, core-stigmatized industries, and outlaw innovation, this book offers rich insights into the ways in which stigma is socially constructed and managed, and the deep structural effects that it has on the industry.

The idea of 'pornography' is often employed to invoke titillation, anger, and disgust. Stigma and the Shaping of the Pornography Industry explores the effects that this stigmatized identity has on the pornography industry itself. From the video era to the emergence of the internet, to trade shows, white-collar workers, technological innovation, and industry-wide characteristics, this book looks beyond content production to explore how stigma has shaped the structures, practices, norms, and boundaries of the wider sector. By drawing on concepts such as dirty work, core-stigmatized industries, and outlaw innovation, this book offers rich insights into the ways in which stigma is socially constructed and managed, and the deep structural effects that it has on the industry.