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    On (not) becoming machine: countering algorithmic thinking through digital performance art


    Putnam, El (2024) On (not) becoming machine: countering algorithmic thinking through digital performance art. Frontiers in Communications and Networks, 9. ISSN 2673-530X

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    Abstract

    Regular engagement with technologies through habit enables these to infiltrate our lives as we are constituted through our machines. This provocation underpins the digital performance art works Ghost Work and Friction , which involve creative repurposing of everyday digital technologies as poetic operations, presenting an embodiment of algorithms that engages with their performativity. The execution of these performance algorithms are interventions into data collection, crafting feminist fabulations in the algorithmic empire of what Couldry and Mejias refer to as data colonialism. Using methods of data feminism in conjunction with Hui's philosophy of technology, these performances cultivate aesthetic experiences that are multifaceted instances of data visceralization. Ghost work and Friction use artistic idioms thick with meaning, reflexively engaging with processes of contingency and recursivity present in human-technological relations. The resulting digital performances are aesthetic experiences that are affective and ambivalent, introducing alternative logics to hegemonic algorithmic thinking that emphasizes extraction and optimization.
    Item Type: Article
    Keywords: digital performance art; algorithmic thinking; poetic operations; data feminism; data visceralization;
    Academic Unit: Faculty of Arts,Celtic Studies and Philosophy > School of English, Media & Theatre Studies > Media Studies
    Item ID: 19846
    Identification Number: 10.3389/fcomm.2024.1352628
    Depositing User: El Putnam
    Date Deposited: 21 May 2025 10:37
    Journal or Publication Title: Frontiers in Communications and Networks
    Publisher: Frontiers Media
    Refereed: Yes
    Related URLs:
    URI: https://mural.maynoothuniversity.ie/id/eprint/19846
    Use Licence: This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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