Art For Algorithms
[img]http://furtherfield.org/sites/furtherfield.org/files/imagecache/content_width_598px/art-for-algorithms.png[/img]
Rob Myers takes a look at how we can subvert the operation of the algorithms that the Digital Humanities, corporations and governments use to read, see, and draw conclusions about human expression by treating them as the true audience for contemporary art and literature.
Art, to misparaphrase Jeff Koons, reflects the ego of its audience. It flatters their ideological investments and symbolically resolves their contradictions. Literature's readers and art's viewers change over time, bringing different ways of reading and seeing to bear. This relationship is not static or one-way. The ideal audience member addressed by art at any given moment is as much produced by art as a producer of it. Those works that find lasting audiences influence other works and enter the canon. But as audiences change the way that the canon is constructed changes. And vice versa. "The Digital Humanities" is the contemporary rebranding of humanities computing. Humanities for the age of Google rather than the East India Company. Its currency is the statistical analysis of texts, images and other cultural resources individually or in aggregate (through "distant reading" and "cultural analytics").
Enter the void
http://furtherfield.org/features/articles/art-algorithms
Art For Algorithms
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Type: discussion
