Contributors

Anthony Downey

(Birmingham City University)

Algorithmic Command: Digital Archives, Data Sets, and Neo-Colonial Futures


"From the Air". ATPD 2022

 

Abstract


Digital images are integral to the process of deploying drones, aerial-bound surveillance systems, and lethal autonomous weapons (LAWs). Extrapolated through algorithms and other forms of machine-learning, data is extracted from their binary code and re-calibrated for the purpose of predicting threats, targeting individuals, and eliminating subjects. These images, often referred to as ‘operational images’ are, in effect, instrumentalized to assert and maintain prevailing structures of power and control. To more fully understand the logic of ‘operational images’ – which have given rise to vast online archives and ‘data sets’ for training algorithms – and how they aspire to define and predetermine present-day realities, this paper will observe the degree to which their taxonomic methods and categorical foundations have been developed from the representational technologies of colonization. The inclination to calculate, measure, and quantify – the propensity, that is, to over-determine subjects as objectified, calculable, and disposable entities – discloses a causal, if not fatal, link between the historical categorizations of colonial discourse and the neo-colonial, algorithmic rationalizations of life and death that are increasingly established through drone technologies and aerial-bound surveillance.

Bio

Anthony Downey  is Professor of Visual Culture in the Middle East and North Africa at Birmingham City University. He sits on the editorial boards of Third Text, Journal of Digital War, and Memory, Mind & Media and is the series editor for Research/Practice (Sternberg Press, 2019–ongoing). Recent publications include Heba Y. Amin: The General’s Stork (2020); Michael Rakowitz: I’m Good at Love, I’m Good at Hate, It’s in between I Freeze (2019); Critique in Practice (2019); and Future Imperfect: Contemporary Art Practices and Cultural Institutions in the Middle East (2016). In his capacity as the Cultural and Commissioning Lead, he is a co-investigator on a four-year Arts and Humanities Research Council project that focuses on education, visual culture, and digital methodologies in Palestine, Lebanon, and Jordan (2020–2024). Downey recently launched wheniseethefuture.com with Heba Y. Amin and is currently researching his forthcoming volume Unbearable States: Digital Media and Cultural Activism in a Post-Digital Age (2022).

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