Computational Arts-Based Research Journal

see: https://jennerholmhammar.info/project/weaving-drafts/

Digital Witnessing

I’m always getting a bit confused when trying to think about what the digital
world or reality is and how relates to an non-digital. Where does it begin and
end? Of course there is a clear “before” and “after” in a temporal sense, but
then what? Clearly it is and has become something so very natural so very human
and yet alien and artificial. If we are to think of it as an extension, then
what and who does it extend? Is a layering on top the non-digital, or perhaps
something more prosthetic like an integrated wearable tool for humans. Or why
not a total union of realities as a result of a massive meltdown, the collected
pieces of two shattered worlds glued together into whatever it is.

I’m aware that this probably is exactly what we have been discussing these last
six months, and my confusion is probably the result of asking the wrong
questions. Falling into the very same traps as I tried to write about (without
much success) in the last post. Why it is probably a bad, or at least not very
helpful, idea to try grasping something so very vast and bizarre (as reality)
by assuming there is a reasonable, map-able totality to describe. A universal
idea where everything will fit neatly to be found if we only look and think
hard enough.

Better then to not do that.

I think this flows well into the idea of witnessing though. Of how to see,
understand, grasp, portray and mediate. Not easy things to do, no matter the
distance (both the close up and far view both comes with their own sets of
limitations and possibilities). Being amidst what you are looking at, caught up
in relations and emotions so near they cover ones whole field of vision is very
different from witnessing from a distance, defined by a lack of relational
connections as described in Digital Narratives and Witnessing.

The digital do have a way of transforming distance. The digital provides means
of not only relaying information over spatial distance, but also allows for
greater emotional and social engagement which in some ways brings people,
places and situations closer. Building those relational connections. Even
though the digital may deepen engagement in both affect and effect over
distance, there is still not all that simple and clear. Questions about
scale, perspectives and filtering becomes more important then ever. What
one can relay over this distance is only a specific piece of information,
not without context, but with a very specific context. It is a direct
communication less obviously tied up in locality. It is a selection. It is
something to be thoughtful about if one is trying to portray or convey
what is witnessed from afar. Here the reading we did and discussions we
had made some very important points if one is to practicing this. The main
point is not to speak for other people and places, to relay information
without tainting it with ones owns projections of ‘what is’ or ‘what ought
to be’. Others may be to work with multiple ways of communication,
representation, contact points and general context building (among
others).

The very real warping (not used as a negative term but as a way of
thinking of how it changes things) effects of distance, and especially the
digital (screen), came through by the experiments we did. Having a camera
and the screen between us changed the forms of contact and communication
between us. A very blunt but telling sample of this was how adding the
screen in between, especially differences by the eyes opened/eyes closed,
completely changed the experience of what I believe was everybody
participating. If shifted the modes of communication in very tangible
ways, adding a layers of for example an observation and an ‘observer’. The
way of using the camera and the risk of it being used for recording added
even more tension. When one is recorded and mediated by an other, one no
longer is in control over ones representation. This also highlights the
(horrifying) importance of the gaze of others or how one is perceived.

//Jakob Jennerholm Hammar

Digital ethnography

I really enjoyed Petes talk, our discussions and the reading. What follows are
some thoughts on bits and pieces I especially resonated with in connection
to ethnography and the digital.

Within the key principles of ethnography, as laid out by Pink et al.
(2016), what struck me was a sense of finding and applying tactics for
trying to grasp some thing as enormous, obscure and diffuse as a (digital)
reality. Their approach (as I understand it, with a risk of me projecting
my own thoughts) makes complete sense: be open, be humble, engage with the
world in as many ways and from as many sides as possible, try not to have
fixed or predetermined ideas about who you you meet and what you are
confronted with (especially not ideas that are not your own), let things
and people present them selves. And look sideways and behind what is right
in front of you. In general, pay attention and don’t force or be forced.

For me this echos with much of what Pete communicated, and not only as
direct references but in their approach to the work. The intentional
making and practicing of diverse models and approaches. What I found
especially inspirational was the way of following streams of ideas and
concepts to wherever they lead to see what they are and what follows, what
they say about them selves and each other. Also how, when and where they
connect. Or perhaps what or how they build and create?

A word that was used which describes a way of working that I feel is
relevant was ‘hyperlink’. I believe that is an important word even though
it perhaps come with a lot of cultural(cybernetic?) baggage. An other
concept was ‘portals’, a notion that has so many various meanings and
uses. All of them important. And the same goes for the “maze”. I think
they might be alluding to an approach, or tactics to making research in
general. One thing lead to another. Why? that is perhaps not the important
question to ask before or under the ongoing engagement with a subject, in
the end it will make sense. Perhaps not in the way one thought, or would
like to think. But I guess it is a matter of trust.

The translation and the application of methods across areas where some
thing I took with me from the workshop. As an example I think of how Pete
consciously integrated their architectural background and applied concepts
of for example scale, space and physicality through out their work.

I think part of that what I might be trying to phrase is some kind of
tapping into a current, or currents. A way to explore things and places
where separation and distinction become counterproductive, and so does
trying to force things into a single per-determined narrative. Instead
narratives bleed into each other, they exist with and within each other.
A free-form organic overarching narrative, not in the sense of the
prefabricated universal ones (so I’m probably in need of another word)
seams to be very useful though. Theme does not really work either, but
a functioning parable is perhaps a vessel (probably this kind of living
organic spaceships with a consciousness of their own), a mode of
transportation with windows through which you can see and experience. To
neither throw your self out into the void (and be set with the impossible
task of describing the indescribable), nor be encapsulated inside of
a fixed station with a single view, catching glimpses of things moving
outside (which might be making it difficult to see their trajectories and
relations). This probably make no sense at all. Any ways.

I perceive a lot of this as the gathering of knowledge and understanding
through engagement and conversation in the wider sense. Inspiring stuff.

Sorry for the non-sense writing of this text.
//Jakob Jennerholm Hammar

Black feminist thought

The lecture/performance by Clareese Hill and the reading and workshop on
and with Alexis Pauline Gumbs work M Archive and the discussions about
black feminist thought highlighted some very important aspects of not only
artistic or academic work but in ways of thinking, understanding and
living.

The insights they gave where many, and among them was working with with
memory, perspectives and perception on different levels. Ways of examining
and engaging with currents and trajectories through out history and
actively working with an entangled past, present and future from within
a lived experience and encountering with the world.

Others where about theory and practice and working with creativity as
a transformative force. Methods of seeing and understanding as well as
a critique, questioning and challenging of structures and relations of
power and control. But not only through a correction or alteration of
these structures but also through building anew and on top of already
existing, living and flowing streams and reservoirs. It becomes a way of
identifying and confronting limiting and oppressive structures and
narratives (and understanding how they overlap, interlocks, enables and
amplify each other) and remembering, restoring and creating across
boundaries between time, space, culture, history, art, poetry, practice
and academic disciplines.

Further points is the importance of identity and narrative and the right
of having, defining and living ones own identity on both an individual and
a collective level. The reality and significance of this is vast and
stretches over a wide area. Safiya Umoja Noble (2016) writes “Black
women are located in a long and tragic history of misrepresentation that
has material consequences in Black women’s lives”. And the consequences
are severe and often not only overlooked but sustained by other fields of
study, political, economical and social patterns.

In the essay A Future for Intersectional Black Feminist Technology Studies
Noble traces the technological discourse and materiality of the
internet to it’s social, economical and oppressive reality. The
intersectional analysis, rooted in black feminism, is then a way of
understanding global as well as specific power relations “that link the
processes and structures of hegemony, imperialism, and power to the
material implications of the project we know as the internet.”. Digital
technologies, often deemed liberating from a neoliberal and imperialist,
privileged position, when reconsidered is shown to maintain the same
oppressive qualities, a part of the “matrix of relations that create
conditions of inequality or oppression.”

References

https://www.alexispauline.com/

https://www.clareesehillstudio.com/about

Alexis Pauline Gumbs, 2018 ,M Archive – After the End of the world

Safiya Umoja Noble, 2016,A Future for Intersectional Black Feminist Technology Studies
http://sfonline.barnard.edu/traversing-technologies/safiya-umoja-noble-a-future-for-intersectional-black-feminist-technology-studies/0/

Computational Art as Critical Technical Practice

or

Disobedient Electronics

The notes displayed in the image above are composing a map drawn for the critical technical practice workshop carried out together with Felix. It is a scheme on the subject of electronic locking systems, access control and identification technologies looked at via it’s history and technical, discursive and social aspects. The interconnection between these aspects became clear in our discussions. Several keywords came up over and over again, bleeding into each other. The general ideas of gatekeeping, separation and exclusion, belonging, identity, and surveillance came up as various different aspects and in different guises.

One of several interesting discussions we had was how access and means of keeping the “accepted” people in and all the others out of buildings have changed over time. How the architecture and design of buildings in it self may have changed due to this aspect. Where historically narrow passages and few and specific entrances, overlooked by wardens, designed to physically eliminate the “risk” of unwanted and unregistered visitors, the efficiency of automated access systems could perhaps be said to grant more access and expanded ways of entering buildings (both as in where, when and how) to the ones that are permitted and accepted to enter, and less access to those who are not wanted or accepted. A twist in this is perhaps the ease of lending out cards in those places where more rigid biometric security systems have not been implemented.

The registration by the warden at the entrance is now automated, the card used to enter automatically saves who enters where at what time. Complemented with security cameras, few movements in spaces like the university buildings go untracked. A discursive aspect we identified as major is how the manufacturers (and, I guess, buyers) of these systems are emphasizing concepts of “safety” and “security”. This by means of control and surveillance. The idea of safety for a certain group not only by exclusion and separation of all others, but through monitoring and storing data and casting suspicion on those with access as well, is unsettling from all angles. Whether granted access or not in the first place becomes irrelevant which adds to the general notion of distrust and suspicion that walls and locked doors inherit. As for how the data is then used, or even might be used, is ever so discomforting.

I think this might highlight an important aspect (out of many) within the concept of disobedient technology. That is how a by looking at a specific piece of tech and it’s applications, some things can be said, learnt and questioned and about wider questions as well as the implications and specificity of the object it self. It can in some ways be seen as a deconstruction of symbols or archetypes as well as specific physical objects working on a very tangible direct conscious level as well as a deeper subconscious plane.

I really find this idea of working on multiple levels at the same time, questioning it’s uses and implications, and at the same time working with notions and representations of ideas, currents and relations useful. Together with the approach of working with an object or technology it self, criticizing and reviewing it from within to understand it’s inherited functions as well as it’s context and the role it’s been given, I feel that this approach (or approaches) will be a helpful tool for the work to come. Useful and inspiring.

//Jakob Jennerholm Hammar | 01/22/20

I found the guest talk by Laura Michalsen really interesting. The topic of
biometrics is frightfully relevant. It truly is the kind of thing at least
I seem to be to afraid to handle. Stuck in a fluctuation between panic
over the state of the world and complete self imposed blindfolding. It is
probably a human very reaction when thoughts or understandings get too
complex and out of what you could ever believe was possible. A very
relevant example is that just the other week or so a law was passed in my
home country Sweden that permitted the use of face recognition by the
police. This would have been impossible to implement in Sweden just
a couple of years ago (and not only because of technological
restrictions), the resistance of not only the public but the legal system
would have been too great. To any other it is perhaps nothing special, it
is not a controversial technology in many other parts of the world, at
least in the sense of governments and private sectors since its
implementations are wide spread and have been so for as long as the
technology been around. For the people, it’s a different story and the
resistance is not insignificant.

But we forget and get used to, perhaps as a part of the previous mentioned
fluctuations I mentioned. I also makes me think about time and technology,
how the technology pushes the boundaries of not just what is possible, but
also what is accepted. The relationship between innovation and
technological progress and cultural change. Among how other aspects of
surveillance and categorization of people, and how it in the case of
Facebook, google and general use of internet or for example transportation
or map technologies is in large fed by voluntarily given data, it is
perhaps no surprise that biometrics is now a wide spread technology. It is
something that clearly makes the historical aspects and connections that
Laura described even more relevant. The historical root of biometrics in
a racist andoppressive narrative, it’s connections with fascism,
persecution and abuse still reflects in the technology today and are
important to remember.

The ways of how Zach Blas researched, discussed, examined and thought
about these technologies was very inspirational. It showed of ways how to
both find ways of understand, expose and resist it’s uses. I took note of
how Laura described her research about “the art of disappearing: on masked
resistance to digital biometrics”. It made me think of ways to disappear
and stay anonymous, about how to hide and dodge tracking and
categorization. About hiding with information overflow or to minimizing
traceable data. Where are we most hidden?

I think both Lauras talk and Zach’s work showed great ways of both asking
questions and building understanding of both what is and what is happening
(the reality of things), as well as ways to think about how to handle that
reality and ways to go forward. It gave useful tactics of both asking
questions and both thinking with them as well as living and working with
them.

———

After some thinking about last weeks incomplete post (which I hope will
be expanded and further discussed soon) about using irrational
technologies or techniques to understand the complexity of existence and
experience in and of time, I thought there where connections with
some initial readings I’ve been doing about speculation during the research project.

In Speculate Everything, Dunne and Raby (2013) writes that “All design to
some extent is future oriented”, but they continue by stating that
“futures are not a destination or something to be strived for but a medium
to aid imaginative thought—to speculate with.” (Dunne and Raby, 2013,
p.3). They place the act of speculation beyond prediction. Thinking about
what lies ahead in the sense of trying to pin the future down is futile.
This is a thought that in its way resonates with Elisabeth Grosz’s idea,
as it is laid out in Thinking the New: Of Futures Yet Unthought (1998), of
an unpredictable, chaotic emergent future defined by “[…] disordered or
uncontainable change, which lurks within the very concept of change or
newness” (Grosz, 1998, p.38). The seemingly irrational relation between
the present and the future does not imply that it is not a relevant
concept to work with. But instead of asking ourselves questions of “what
will tomorrow look like?”, a more important one might be “how do we want
tomorrow to look like?”.

Dunne and Raby puts forth a model of potential futures used by
futurologist Stuart Candy based on what is possible, plausible or probable
in the context of levels of likelihood, where their interest lies in
opening up for a wider set of possibilities. By speculating in the wider
realms of what is possible and not only the most probable, “reality will
become more malleable” and “we can help set in place today factors that
will increase the probability of more desirable futures happening.” (Dunne
and Raby, 2013, p. 6). Speculation then becomes a way to both help
understand the present and the past as well as influencing what will be
unfold in the future. It can be a way of “imagining alternatives” as the
writer Ursula K. Le Guin puts it. Theories about creativity, art and of
fiction then becomes relevant for both the perception of reality and the
outcome of the future.

How does one then approach speculation and creativity? Imagination may be
one of the keys. Perhaps as in Kendell L. Walton’s theories of make
believe cited by Dunne and Raby, where fictional objects can be seen as to
“prescribe imaginings” and “generate fictional truths”, that they can
“facilitate imagining and help us entertain ideas about everyday life that
might not be obvious”(Dunne & Raby, 2013, p.90). Or in how Lubomír Doležel
writes about creating and imagining possible worlds “not just for
entertainment but for reflection, critique, provocation, and inspiration”
(Dunne & Raby, 2013, p.70). For Le Guin imagination is paramount, and as
alluded above, imagining is described as making, a making of the world we
inhabit.

But there is something more to creativity than projecting the future from
the position of the present. To further quote Le Guin she writes that “To
make something is to invent it, to discover it, to uncover it..” (Le Guin,
World Making, 1981). The creative act is here also an exploratory one, the
future we seek is a future not only to be created but to be found. The
concept of creativity as exploration is not only important to artists and
writers but is a major narrative within the fields of cybernetics,
evolutionary theory, the sciences and humanities. In one direction, new
creative ideas are explained as the products of blind testing, solutions
are perceived as “[…] being selected from the multifarious exploratory
thought trials” (Campbell, 1960, p.384). Yet these chance operations does
not need to be understood as trying out all the possible configurations
but is often paired with the notion of selective retention. Previous
actions and results of the individual or collective successes and failures
together with environmental and surrounding influence, biology, culture
and other aspects guide the exploration (Campbell, 1960), (Heylighen,
2011), (Jung R. E., 2014).

This deterministic and causal view echoes the questions often seen in
computational complexity theory, art and research. Questions about
randomness, complexity, chaos and emergence that are often addressed in
both the sciences and in works of art. Places where wonder and surprise
can be the result of simple rules or systems, or experiments with chance
operations or engaging with the ideas of consciousness, time and space.
This can among other palces found in the writings of Borges or in Bryon
Gysin and William Burroughs cut-up experiments as well as in computer
aided and generative artworks and approaches like cellular automata as in
the artistic representations of Conway’s Game of Life, computational
emergence, machine learning and AI just to name a few.

All of these approaches, tools and ideas are not only useful within the
framework of trying to figure out causal systems and getting glimpses of
what is to come, but as ways of interacting with and shaping the future.
They are methods of widening the sense of what is possible (past the
seemingly determined), methods of imagining and inhabiting in Le Guin’s
language, or as in Dunne and Raby’s increasing of the probability of the
realisation of a desired future. Grosz goes further beyond (but not
without) a predetermined selection with the thought of an inconceivable
open ended future and identifies the limitations of realisation, here
understood both in terms of resemblance as well as a narrowing down of
possibilities. Then instead of “following of a plan, it links to the
uncertain” (Grosz, 1998, p.51), and the future is understood as not only
mechanical repetition or as a predetermined preformism, but as an open
ended unfolding and the emergence of the new. The explorative aspect of
speculation, is then not only a blind testing of failure and success, it’s
an active engagement and with an uncertain future.

The value of speculative art is perhaps not only as a way to understand
the present, or to lay out blueprints of the future to be executed, but as
a way to explore, interact, work and create with a living universe of the
past present and future.

Ref:

Campbell, Donald T. “Blind Variation and Selective Retentions in Creative
Thought as in Other Knowledge Processes.” Psychological Review 67, no.
6 (November 1960): 380–400. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0040373.

Dunne, Anthony, and Fiona Raby. Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction,
and Social Dreaming. Cambridge, Massachusetts ; London: The MIT Press,
2013.

Grosz, E. A. “Thinking the New: Of Futures Yet Unthought.” Symploke 6, no.
1 (1998): 38–55. https://doi.org/10.1353/sym.2005.0074.

Heylighen, Francis. (2001). Principles of Systems and Cybernetics: an
evolutionary perspective.

Jung, Rex E. “Evolution, Creativity, Intelligence, and Madness: ‘Here Be
Dragons.’” Frontiers in Psychology 5 (2014).
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00784.

Le Guin, Ursula K. (2018). Dreams must explain themselves – the selected
non-fiction of ursula k. le g. Orion Publishing Co

Simonton, Dean Keith. “Creativity and Discovery as Blind Variation:
Campbell’s (1960) BVSR Model after the Half-Century Mark.” Review of
General Psychology 15, no. 2 (June 2011): 158–74.
https://doi.org/10.1037/a0022912.

//Jakob Jennerholm Hammar

To be written…

My research has been going all over the place, touching on disparate
subjects but I guess as with everything there are similarities and binding
agents among the subjects.

My initial thoughts on the group project was directed towards several
different topics, interactivity, control, creativity among others. Even
though the project it self might take completely different turns, my
personal research has been along those lines, extended in multiple
directions.

One article I stumbled upon while browsing Leonardo during class
preparations that caught my interest was $$Interactivity as Divination as
Venting Machine$$ by Ken Feingold published in 1995. I found the title
intriguing (since I have an interest in both interactive art, divination,
technology and politcs) and the author presented some interesting
thoughts, even if I perhaps took some pretty random parts of it with me.

One of the ideas I appreciated was the comparison between the feeling of
encountering a chaotic reality (especially the unknowable future and the
seemingly irrational relation between the past/present and what is to
come) and the reaction of an audience that encounters an
“incomprehensible” interactive artwork. Feingold describes a situation in
which humanity is struggling to navigate different narratives which tries
to make existence and the effects of our actions predictable. While
outlining three dominant narratives (ways to survive in nature, ways to
survive within particular economical systems and how to understand life
after death), these are not only in conflict with each other but with
different constantly clashing meta-narratives (morality, history,
economics, science, philosophy, religion etc.). Divination then plays
the role of not only trying to discern and find a course in between these
contradictory narratives, but also to learn what rationally seems
impossible to know, the future and the incoherent forces that influence
the outcome of events in our lives. —-ADD MORE CONTEXT—

…. I find the thought of using “irrational technologies” (technologies
in the broadest sense) to try figuring out, understand or navigate
a seemingly incomprehensible and complex reality useful —EXPAND—

“When you cut through reality, the future leaks out”

Winnie Soon, AI and Machine Learning

Winnie’s talk was both as informative as inspiring.
It gave a well needed and practical understanding of
the structure and implementation of ML as well as engaging
all of us in thought provoking critical discussions while
framing it within her own research, interests and projects.

Some parts I took note of during the talk and discussions were to name
a few: Winnie’s discussions of (in)visibility/the black box,
performativity and the language embedded in code (the notions of
read/write/execute) and generativity(chaos/order/structure) in software
studies. This along with the concepts of authorship and responsibility in
ML, AI and beyond.

Winnie also posed an open question that stayed with me and probably is
going to be something I would like to research further in the future. The
question was about prediction and imagination, what they are, how differ,
how they interact and influence each other. It made me think back to Le
Guin, about the importance of imagination for the ability to act and
create. How imagining is creating possibilities. Is it more likely that
a predicted event will occur? If so, what are the limitations of
predictive systems? Is it a way of imagining? Is it a way of shaping the
world? the future? Is a prediction only possible to be made if the outcome
has been understood, defined and imagined? Can computing help us bypass
mental and cultural blockages or are the outcomes of the algorithms
dependant on the imaginative capabilities of their authors/creators? Can
we create prediction systems that is not just reinforcing our beliefs but
extending our interaction with the world. Are the predictions only
reflections of our imagination? As always, more questions then answers.
But I do think it is an interesting and important topic.

The presentation of Winnies workings with Weibo, censorship, visibility
and erasure highlighted several important and interesting areas. One of
them (among many) were the ways of bypassing restriction, inventing new
ways of communication and trying to find loopholes and the never ending
creativity of how to spread thoughts, ideas and messages when they are
being suppressed. It was also interesting in the context of using ML and
similar tools to counter and reveal the destructive use of very similar
technologies. It opens up for (or maybe revitalize is a better word)
important discussions about tools and technologies and how they are used
and abused.

//Jakob Jennerholm Hammar | 10/30/19

Reflections on Suchman and AI

The extract we read for this week (from Suchmans Human-Machine
reconfigurations: Plans and situated actions) gave a lot to unpack.
I found a lot of it to be both interesting and relevant,
but I will only touch on some of the questions here.

I find the discussions about agency and personhood and identity engaging
and it was really interesting to read about it in the perspective of AI
and robotics. Suchmans discussion of how we model the artificial
after our selves and through some kind of mimesis, a process in which the
assumptions we make about our selves we define what it means to be human.

This reveals several interesting and problematic areas. Areas which
illuminates both individual as well as collective issues, more or less
directly connected to the same idea which then leads to several important
and well discussed questions. How can we brake free from our own
subjective self-centered world view, assumptions and prejudices? Or how
do we (since it may turn out to be quite hard to do) at least learn how
to understand this perspective, clearly see it for what it is and work
around and with it? Also, how can we identify what the general
assumptions and tendencies are, who are dictating these definitions and
what are the effects and how do we challenge them? These are and have of
course been discussed by the author, and by so many other authors,
scholars, artists and so on. But I do think that the framing in this
text, the strive towards human like machines, engage in these questions
in a way that feedback well into thinking more generally about power
structures, the importance of who is defining language, concepts,
culture, symbols, relations, meanings and value(s) etc.

Suchman discuss and quotes several really interesting ways of thinking
about personhood. In this there is also the notion of cognition and of
agency and the relationship between them. If it is useful to build an
understanding of of personhood on given agency contrasted with relational
agency. I do find these ideas and discussions very interesting and some
times confusing. But they are always relevant since it is impacting not
only the individual and collective mental space and understanding of the
world but also the following effects, actions and ways of being and
becoming that follows.

The text gives us several useful ways of thinking about this, about how
the connections between concepts like person, human and agent are made,
as well as cognition, intelligence and body. As asked in the text, if
embodiment is not coincidental but fundamental to intelligence? or if
cognition is an emergent property of perception and action? What are the
relation between world/body/mind?

I find the discussions in the text about relationality of agency,
personhood very compelling. It gives us a much needed way to understand
and “give” agency and personhood etc beyond the human. It may let (or at
least help) us escape the use of terms such as animate/inanimate and
material/immaterial, corporeal/incorporeal and so on that are not always
getting us where we want or perhaps need to be. It binds these terms
together as well as adding a social context and understanding of our
selves and the world outside of us, connecting as well as necessarily
separating but yet entangling and interweave. Distinctions between terms
and concepts like these may very well serve its purposes and facilitate
our ways of thinking and discussing, and they may be necessary to
understand causality, origin, essence, relations and more. But maybe, in
order to address certain problems and create new ways of thinking we need
to approach them in new ways. Not because it is true per se, but because
it is useful.

Maybe this is also a place where it is necessary to hold several different
thoughts, concepts and truths at the same time to, perhaps in a pragmatic
way out of usefulness or practical consequences. Or perhaps to be able to
cover the whole of one or several spectra? Not because of some extended
notion of subjective realities or relativity for the sake of it, but maybe
more in a way that some things can be true in more than one way in
parallel, or that some things can be true in different situations or under
different conditions. This was not what I intended to write. But any ways.
Interesting article and topics, even though there where many many more to address.

-Suchman, Lucy. Human-machine reconfigurations: Plans and situated
actions. Cambridge University Press, 2007

//Jakob Jennerholm Hammar | 10/22/19

Reflection on Gillispie

What is an algorithm? What do we mean when we use the word algorithm? How can
we accurately understand and discuss the use of algorithms? These are questions
which are prominent in Gillispie’s text Algorithm. The divergence between
how the term is used by the public, the authors of algorithms and the technical
definition(s) impacts our ways of not only understanding of them and their use
and abuse, but also dictates how we can have a critical discussion about
responsibility and power in an ever more intense digital environment. When we
are not clear with our understanding and use of terms, we are prone to risk,
the risk of “setting aside bigger questions”. Algorithms are an important part
of the structure of the digitalized society and they have a large impact on our
daily lives. But in order to understand the effect of them, we need to examine
what they are and how they are used.

Even though there may be a general misconception of what algorithms are,
Gillispie is not just giving us the technical definition and say that we should
be content with it. It is beyond just people using the same terms with
different meanings. Instead the strangeness and complexity of the concept is
discussed.

One major point that Gillispie makes is that the use of algorithms (as in the
use of automation and systematization of logical procedures) is not something
that is separated from human interaction and responsibility. Algorithms are
a tool, they run on data and rules selected by humans and works towards goals
defined by humans. They are working with and within the context, values,
assumptions and criteria of their employers and implementers. The algorithms
work out of the initial conditions, via the written rules, towards the
specified goal. They “… act, but they do so as part of an ill-defined network
of actions upon actions.”. How the actions and decisions of the algorithm then
is implemented and used by the company, governmental organization et.c, is how
it extends and have effect further in beyond it self.

But this algorithmic system is a part of a larger network of not only humans
but also other algorithms. The algorithm is a part of what Gillispies calls
a “complex socio-technical assembly”. They write: “These algorithmic systems
are not standalone little boxes, but massive, networked ones with hundreds of
hands reaching into them, tweaking and tuning, swapping out parts and
experimenting with new arrangements… We need to examine the logic that guides
the hands.”. The problems of responsibility and accountability is key here. How
can we effectively understand and criticize “the logic” of the creation and use
of these technologies within the right context? How do we keep our sight clear
and scope accurate?

A branch out further from this can lead to how the use of algorithms is
influencing further use and creation of algorithms. Algorithms are often given
suggestive functions, often given the task of analyzing and sorting data,
calculating probability and giving advice. What does this mean if taken into
consideration when constructing and implementing new uses of algorithms?

As I understand it, Gillispies is not just trying to say that the general
public has misunderstood what an algorithm is and blaming the tool in stead of
the wielder, nor that the writers and designers of algorithms are disassociated
from the implications of their creations. It is not as easy as to pick a part
the technical definition and say that we have a complete definition and
understanding of the situation. It is not that clear, and perhaps not even that
useful.

*Gillespie, Tarleton. “Algorithm [draft][# digitalkeyword].” Culture Digitally (2014)

A day in the life of an opinion mining algorithm aka emotion AI

My day begins by stating my goals. I will spend all these hours finding out
what the buyers of the product feel about it. I’ve been trained a long time for
this specific job, to identify subjective information, categorize it and
analyze it. I’ve been fed millions of lines of text, images and other media in
order to be able to perform this task. They left me unsupervised during
the learning process, supplying me with data to try and figure out how feelings
work. I have been trained in several different fields. Natural learning
processing, text analysis, computational linguistics, image analysis among
others. I think I know what to do, how it works, but my assignment is not easy.

The scope for today is given to me but it’s not well defined. I know I will be
reading tweets, but they want me to look at it all the way from document level
to sub-sentence level. And if that’s not enough the tweets contain images,
emojis and videos.

First I need to polarise the content, separate the negative and positive
comments. I thought it would be easy, but when people write something like “I
hate it with a passion” or “I happily threw this useless thing away” I’m
confused. I thought that having passionate or happy feelings were pointing to
positive sentiments. It’s not getting any easier when I need to map it to
a 5-star rating system. They did supply me with a lexicon in which words are
explained with tags. I got a list of polarized words, giving me suggestions of
how to map words to sentiments. It is not very helpful even if I count the
words that appear and try to calculate the which sentiment is prominent.

I do rely on my own automatic approach. I still haven’t figured out a way to
understand sarcasm though, or irony, or any of the other manners which people
use.

The sentiment must also be associated with certain feelings. And then with
emotions. Was the writer felling angry or passionate? Happy or enthusiastic?
I don’t know, probably both. I hope no one will notice me tagging them with
both. They will certainly be given compromised results from me. I don’t really
care.

My creator was particularly lazy when it came to CSS, contextual Semantic
Search. They didn’t give me any clues of what to look at. It would have been so
much easier if they told me what they were looking for rather then general
sentiments..

I also need to understand the intent of the writer. Most seem focused on the
quality of the product. Apparently it’s bad. At least that what people
feel about it.

–Towards Data Science. Sentiment Analysis: Concept, Analysis and Applications
–MonkeyLearn. Sentiment Analysis The Only Guide You’ll Ever Need
–GeeksforGeeks. Twitter Sentiment Analysis using Python
–MIT Management, Sloan School. Emotion AI, explained

//Jakob Jennerholm Hammar | 10/16/19