<synthesis> ** OUT NOW ** Theory on Demand #33: Algorithmic Anxiety in Contemporary Art

[Patricia de Vries]

*OUT NOW!*


*Theory on Demand #33*


Algorithmic Anxiety in Contemporary Art: A Kierkegaardian Inquiry into the
Imaginary of Possibility


by Patricia de Vries


Available as open access E-pub here
<https://networkcultures.org/blog/publication/tod33-algorithmic-anxiety-in-contemporary-art-a-kierkegaardian-inquiry-into-the-imaginary-of-possibility/>
.



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 dissertation 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’.
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