Volumetric Regimes : cultures matérielles d’une présence quantifiée  is a collective work edited by Jara Rocha and Femke Snelting, published in 2022 by Open Humanities Press in the Data Browser series. ¹

Stemming from the collaborative research project Possible Bodies, initiated by the two editors, the book questions contemporary regimes of volumetry and 3D modeling. It analyzes how three-dimensional computing technologies—historically linked to modern technosciences—contribute to logics of optimization, normalization, and technocapitalist hegemony. By defining volumetry as the set of techniques for measuring and modeling volumes, the book highlights how these tools tend to reproduce “the probable” at the expense of “the possible,” particularly in the context of contemporary hypercomputing.

Through an intersectional investigation, contributions—including those by Sophie Boiron, Pierre Huyghebaert, Simone C. Niquille, and Helen V. Pritchard—explore the political, cultural, and material implications of digitization, scanning, and modeling of bodies. Issues of race, gender, class, species, age, and ability are examined in light of practices of representation and simulation. The book thus proposes to denaturalize notions of intensity, dimension, and substance, considering them not as simple measurable properties, but as relational and processual realities, embedded in complex material ecologies. ²

Designed by Manetta Berends, the book is the first in the Data Browser series to be produced entirely with free software. It is based on a “wiki-to-print” configuration using MediaWiki, HTML, CSS, and Paged.js. For this project, Manetta Berends developed a new series of scripts, drawing inspiration from Diversions, a book published by Constant and designed by OSP. The layout itself constitutes a “version”: an HTML+CSS redesign of the initial design of the Data Browser series, designed by Stuart Bailey. ³

Volumetric Regimes combines theoretical reflection and editorial experimentation: it does not merely analyze the infrastructures of quantified presence, but also reconfigures the material conditions of production, mobilizing free tools and collaborative practices consistent with its critical perspective. ⁴