In Defense of Raw Data: Noise, Materiality and Posthumanism in Uboa's The Sky May Be

Analysing three tracks from Uboa’s noise music album The Sky May Be (2018), namely Salivate on Cue, The Sky May Be (Extus) and Thigh High Cat Tights, it is argued that Uboa’s transfeminine noise music thematizes the abject, material, posthuman potential of raw data and noise (in its musical and cybernetic sense), allowing a critique of information as an immaterial entity. First, a connection between noise and abjection is made, citing Warren Weaver, Milos Zahradka Maiorana and Julia Kristeva. Then, authors such as Katherine N. Hayles and Hito Steyerl are evoked to reflect on how cybernetics can lead to political recognition, but also to essentialism and disembodiment. Finally, resorting to works by Donna J. Haraway and Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, the abject and embodied materiality of noise and raw data is valued as a dissident alternative to cybernetics’ strategy of essentialist political recognition.