Society of the Query #2 - Antoinette Rouvroy: Algorithmic Governmentality and the End(s) of Critique

Society of the Query #2 - Antoinette Rouvroy: Algorithmic Governmentality and the End(s) of Critique from network cultures on Vimeo.

Matteo Pasquinelli : Code Surplus Value and the Augmented Intellect @ Incredible Machines, 2014, Vancouver

In conjunction with Access Gallery, the independent curator Mohammad Salemy presents "Incredible Machines," a conference addressing different aspects of the expanding role of networked computers and digital processes in the production of knowledge. A spectre is haunting the space of knowledge—the spectre of telecomputation. Unlike the modern age, when scientific authority and the idea of objectivity were typically embodied in concrete objects like atlases, encyclopedias, books and photographs, the materiality and credibility of human knowledge in the contemporary moment is determined to a great extent by the gathering and sharing, as well as the algorithmic processing and visualization of digital data. This new space has been materialized by the technical synthesis of mass telecommunication and mass computation, enabling a new kind of collective production of knowledge unseen in human history. Resting upon the computational promise of ever-new developments in hardware, software, and network technologies, a visually dynamic, statistically driven and object-oriented form of structural positivism has emerged as the dominant condition for the production and dissemination of knowledge. 
Starting first in the natural and social sciences and later in the humanities, the "digital turn" has recently begun to reshape how artists look at the world, conceive of their practices and connect with audiences. "Incredible Machines" probes the ramifications of knowledge production's dependence on machines, mechanical thinking and telecomputation as well as the theoretical and practical entanglement of technological apparatuses with aesthetic theory and art practices. Many artists, philosophers and scholars from a variety of fields agree that the widespread use of networked computers in the last two decades has forever transformed the overlapping relations between art, technology and the process of knowledge production. What is still contested however are the ways in which this shift affects the overlap between knowledge and power, or rather, how technological changes might be incorporated into an inherently political understanding of the contemporary theory of knowledge. 
 Keynote speakers: Alexander R. Galloway, Suhail Malik, Reza Negarestani Planetary Session moderator: Jaleh Mansoor Other participants: Benjamin H. Bratton, Clint Burnham, Michael Ferrer, Daniel Sacilotto, Benedict Singleton, Nick Srnicek, McKenzie Wark, Benjamin Woodard Respondents: Ali Ahadi, Morehshin Allahyari, Julieta Aranda, Amanda Beech, Samuel Forsythe, Aaron Gemmill, Kate Henderson, Joshua Johnson, Gelare Khoshgozaran, Deneb Kozikoski, Nick Land, Christina McPhee, Jason LaRiviere, Matteo Pasquinelli, Judith Rodenbeck, Brian Rogers, Nooshin Rostami, Rory Rowan, Martha Schwendener, Robin Simpson, T'ai Smith, Kate Steinmann, Peter Wolfendale The "Incredible Machines" conference marks the second phase of a multi-part curatorial project by the independent curator Mohammad Salemy, which began in September 2013 with an exhibition at Vancouver's Access Gallery, where he is currently curator-in-residence. 
The exhibition, Encyclonospace Iranica, showcased works by nine Iranian artists who responded to the relationship between telecomputation and knowledge production proposed by the Iranian philosopher Reza Negarestani. "Incredible Machines" is generously sponsored by the Canada Council for the Arts, with additional support from the University of British Columbia's Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory, Simon Fraser University [Vancity Office of Community Engagement, the Institute for the Humanities, Centre for the Comparative Study of Muslim Societies and Cultures] and the Global Center for Advanced Studies.

Luciana Parisi - For a New Computational Aesthetics: Algorithmic Environments as Actual Objects @ BKM, 07.11.2012

Luciana Parisi - For a New Computational Aesthetics: Algorithmic Environments as Actual Objects. from bkm on Vimeo.
Algorithms are at the core of the computational logic. Formalism and axiomatics have also determined how the shortest algorithmic set or program deploys the most elegant form. This equivalence between axiomatics and beauty however hides a profound ontological ground based on order, rationality and cognition. However, this paper suggests that the pervasion of ubiquitous media and in particular of software agencies (from page ranking software to software for urban design) point to the formation of a new computational aesthetics defined by prehending algorithms. The paper will argue that this new mode of prehension defies the ontological ground of order and cognition revealing that randomness (or non-compressible data) is at the core of computation. The paper will draw on Alfred N. Whitehead’s notion of actual objects and Gregory Chaitin’s theory of the uncomputable to suggest that algorithms need to be understood in terms of ecology of prehensions. This understanding implies a notion of computational aesthetics defined by the chaotic architecture of data hosted by our programming culture. Luciana Parisi is a Senior Lecturer in Interactive Media at the Centre for Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London. She is author of Abstract Sex. Philosophy, Bio-Technology and the Mutations of Desire (London/New York 2004) and a progressive thinker in the emerging field of mediaecology and technoecology. Her research looks at the asymmetric relationship between science and philosophy, aesthetics and culture, technology and politics to investigate potential conditions for ontological and epistemological change. Her work on cybernetics and information theories, evolutionary theories, genetic coding and viral transmission has informed her analysis of culture and politics, the critique of capitalism, power and control. She has published articles about the relation between cybernetic machines, memory and perception in the context of a non-phenomenological critique of computational media and in relation to emerging strategies of branding and marketing. Her interest in interactive media has also led her research to engage more closely with computation, cognition, and algorithmic aesthetics. She is currently writing on architectural modeling and completing a monograph: Contagious Architecture. Computation, Aesthetics and the Control of Space (MIT Press, Nov. 2013).