Taste and the algorithm

Today, a consistent part of our everyday interaction with art and aesthetic artefacts occurs through digital media, and our preferences and choices are systematically tracked and analyzed by algorithms in ways that are far from transparent. Our consumption is constantly documented, and then, we are fed back through tailored information. We are therefore witnessing the emergence of a complex interrelation between our aesthetic choices, their digital elaboration, and also the production of content and the dynamics of creative processes. All are involved in a process of mutual influences, and are partially determined by the invisible guiding hand of algorithms. With regard to this topic, this paper will introduce some key issues concerning the role of algorithms in aesthetic domains, such as taste detection and formation, cultural consumption and production, and showing how aesthetics can contribute to the ongoing debate about the impact of today’s “algorithmic culture”

The genotype-phenotype relationship in multicellular pattern-generating models - the neglected role of pattern descriptors

Background: A deep understanding of what causes the phenotypic variation arising from biological patterning processes, cannot be claimed before we are able to recreate this variation by mathematical models capable of generating genotype-phenotype maps in a causally cohesive way. However, the concept of pattern in a multicellular context implies that what matters is not the state of every single cell, but certain emergent qualities of the total cell aggregate. Thus, in order to set up a genotype-phenotype map in such a spatiotemporal pattern setting one is actually forced to establish new pattern descriptors and derive their relations to parameters of the original model. A pattern descriptor is a variable that describes and quantifies a certain qualitative feature of the pattern, for example the degree to which certain macroscopic structures are present. There is today no general procedure for how to relate a set of patterns and their characteristic features to the functional relationships, parameter values and initial values of an original pattern-generating model. Here we present a new, generic approach for explorative analysis of complex patterning models which focuses on the essential pattern features and their relations to the model parameters. The approach is illustrated on an existing model for Delta-Notch lateral inhibition over a two-dimensional lattice. Results: By combining computer simulations according to a succession of statistical experimental designs, computer graphics, automatic image analysis, human sensory descriptive analysis and multivariate data modelling, we derive a pattern descriptor model of those macroscopic, emergent aspects of the patterns that we consider of interest. The pattern descriptor model relates the values of the new, dedicated pattern descriptors to the parameter values of the original model, for example by predicting the parameter values leading to particular patterns, and provides insights that would have been hard to obtain by traditional methods. Conclusion: The results suggest that our approach may qualify as a general procedure for how to discover and relate relevant features and characteristics of emergent patterns to the functional relationships, parameter values and initial values of an underlying pattern-generating mathematical model

Mapping the unseen: making sense of the subjective image.

It used to be thought that photography, as a kind of automatic mapping, could provide an objective view of the world. Now we are aware of the power of framing and other interventions between what is 'out there' and what is captured in depiction. Perhaps even perception, let alone depiction, shares this subjectivity? The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis holds that different cultures actually see the world in different ways, as evidenced and influenced by concepts in their languages – though this idea has been derided, for example by Pinker. A key difficulty is that the word subjectivity is bandied about without care for its different meanings and without distinguishing the many forms it takes in the graphic image. If into this muddle we introduce the idea of interactivity, still greater confusion easily follows. The chapter brings some order to different kinds and levels of subjectivity by documenting how they are reflected in forms of graphical mapping. In the process, it becomes clear how significant is the change in media technologies from those bound by the conventional rectangles of the page and screen to media which are interactive, pervasive, multimodal, physical and social

The Mole & The Snake

This article starts from the Foucaultanian notions of biopower and discipline, deal- ing with the strategies of the modern and contemporary capitalism. Introducing the term biopower into his research, Foucault is alluding to a series of transformations re- lated to the capitalist system: life enters into the scope of power in terms of \u201ccontrolled insertion of bodies\u201d in the social apparatus of production, as well as in terms of an \u201cadaptation of population phenomena to economic processes\u201d. It involves the exchange of services on which the Fordist social pact was founded in the twentieth century. The life that is claimed in and against the relationship of capital concerns \u201cneeds\u201d that refer to a \u201cconcrete essence of man\u201d. In the undeniable awareness of a \u201ctriangulation\u201d between sovereignty, discipline and biopower, the author, as a criterion for reading the dynamics of contemporary power, analyzes the theme of control referring to Deleuze. This is de- lineated in the double form of \u201cbiopolitical algorithms\u201d and of the normalization that by means of the selection and targeted processing of big data and information packages, incessantly produced by social activity in and on the network, capture forms of life at the service of capitalism

No measure for culture? Value in the new economy

This paper explores articulations of the value of investment in culture and the arts through a critical discourse analysis of policy documents, reports and academic commentary since 1997. It argues that in this period, discourses around the value of culture have moved from a focus on the direct economic contributions of the culture industries to their indirect economic benefits. These indirect benefits are discussed here under three main headings: creativity and innovation, employability, and social inclusion. These are in turn analysed in terms of three forms of capital: human, social and cultural. The paper concludes with an analysis of this discursive shift through the lens of autonomist Marxist concerns with the labour of social reproduction. It is our argument that, in contemporary policy discourses on culture and the arts, the government in the UK is increasingly concerned with the use of culture to form the social in the image of capital. As such, we must turn our attention beyond the walls of the factory in order to understand the contemporary capitalist production of value and resistance to it. </jats:p

No Accounting for Culture? Value in the New Economy

This paper explores the articulation of the value of investment in culture and the arts through a critical discourse analysis of policy documents, reports and commentary since 1997. It argues that in this period discourses around the value of culture have moved from the direct economic contributions of the culture industries to indirect economic benefits. These indirect benefits are discussed under three main headings: creativity and innovation, employability and social inclusion. These in turn are analysed in terms of three forms of capital: human, social and cultural. The paper concludes with an analysis of this discursive shift through the lens of autonomist Marxist concerns with the labour of social reproduction. It is our argument that, in contemporary policy discourses on culture and the arts, that government in the UK is increasingly concerned with the use of culture to form the social in the image of capital. As such we have to turn our attention beyond the walls of the factory in order to understand the contemporary capitalist production of value

Towards the Affect of Intimacy

Abstract This thesis explores the trajectory that the developing technological fields of Ambient Intelligence and Persuasive Technologies introduce new intricate relationships beyond fundamental use and availability because they change our abilities to act. Since its classic articulation by Hegel (1927) philosophical explication of the relationship between people and technology states that technology is a mediating factor between people and the world. Associated with this view, which has characterized the resulting phenomenology and philosophy of technology for nearly two decades, is an understanding of technology as a form of alienation. In this dissertation the author shows how this old interpretation of the relationship between a person and their tool has emphasized how the person is active whilst the tool is passive. This traditional distinction fails to grasp the complex interaction between people and technology in the contemporary world. The nature of new technologies and novel theoretical work in this field suggests that this critical framework is now inadequate. Today, technology mediates the relationship between people and the world in increasingly complex and often collective ways. McLuhan (1967) stated: “Media evoke in us unique ratios of sense perceptions. The extension of any one of these senses alters the way we think and act”. As Greenfield (2006) and Fogg (2002) also posit, certain Ambient Intelligence and Persuasive Technologies are in-principle shaping everyday human behaviours in radically new ways. In particular, I explore how new technologies like those developed in the Artificial Companions Project can impact on our understanding of intimacy and identity. Indeed, Ambient Intelligence Technologies may play the role of reference groups (Shibutani 1987), groups who are real or imaginary and whose standpoints are being used as the frame of reference for the human actor. Given that these technologies have continuously reconfigured identification and profiling practices, this analysis rephrases insight of philosophers like Paul Ricoeur (1990), George Herbert Mead (1959) and Helmuth Plessner (1975) to trace how: The construction of our identity is mediated by how we profile others as profiling us. Thus, new technologies can become reference groups, encroaching on our everyday activities and even affecting our moral decision-making processes. As genuine upgrades of our practical space, they are destined to play a larger formative role in people’s lives in the future. Following Heidegger in Das Ding (Heidegger 1951), Latour once framed the wider social role of technologies as res publica or ‘public things’ (Latour 2005). He pointed out that the old German word ‘ding’ etymologically did not only infer ‘material object’ but also to assembly as gathering space - that thing that can bring together what it separates. Following Latour, Verbeek states that technological ‘things’ do not only mediate our existence, but are places where these mediations are made explicit – therefore, Verbeek argues, they are the places where people have to start to discuss and criticise the quality of the ways in which these ‘things’ help to shape our daily lives (Verbeek 2008). This thesis attempts to offer a new approach to this criticism through theoretical comparison and transdisciplinary analysis