Over the past decade, a growing number of artists and critical practitioners have become engaged with algorithms. This artistic engagement has resulted in algorithmic theatre, bot art, and algorithmic media and performance art of various kinds that thematise the dissemination and deployment of algorithms in everyday life. Especially striking is the high volume of artistic engagements with facial recognition algorithms, trading algorithms and search engine algorithms over the past few years.The fact that these three types of algorithms have garnered more responses than other types of algorithms suggests that they form a popular subject of artistic critique. This critique addresses several significant, supra-individual anxieties of our decade: socio- political uncertainty and polarisation, the global economic crisis and cycles of recession, and the centralisation and corporatisation of access to online information. However, the constituents of these anxieties — which seem to be central to our experience of algorithmic culture — are rarely interrogated. They, therefore, merit closer attention.This book uses prominent artistic representations of facial recognition algorithms, trading algorithms, and search algorithms as the entry point into an exploration of the constituents of the anxieties braided around these algorithms. It proposes that the work of Søren Kierkegaard—one of the first theorists of anxiety—helps us to investigate and critically analyse the constituents of ‘algorithmic anxiety’.
MULTIFILE
In the context of new media art, the intrinsic interplay of disciplines poses constant learning challenges to the artists, as it requires a continuous acquisition and reconfiguration of knowledge. This article seeks to understand to what extent knowledge processes of creation, transfer and adoption contribute to the creative collaborative outcomes of new media artists, by investigating: i) explicit and tacit knowledge flows of new media artists; ii) strategies for knowledge creation, transfer and adoption; iii) contexts in which these processes are facilitated. Based on qualitative methods, findings indicate that the way in which artists learn and interact is related to their personality; values such as openness, curiosity, respect or trust shape the context for a shared interest in knowledge creation, adoption, and exchange. A holistic approach to knowledge-creating place (‘Ba’) contributes to understanding the fluid contexts in which creative processes occur.
MULTIFILE
Conducted for the 2019 Venice Bienale catalogue of the Romanian pavillion, in particular Canal Grande: The Capital Pool and the Associated Public of Dan Mihaltianu, curated by Cristian Nae. The work “functions at first sight as a wishing well. It establishes an autonomous art fund and invites the visitors to self-organize and to decide on the utilization of the capital raised during the exhibition via capitalpool.net, proposing an artistic formula for exercising direct democracy.”
MULTIFILE
