<p>Ben Joseph Andrews, Emma Roberts, <em>Turbulence: Jamais Vu</em>, 2023. VR experience, 10 min. Courtesy of the artists</p>
<p>Ben Joseph Andrews, Emma Roberts, <em>Turbulence: Jamais Vu</em>, 2023. VR experience, 10 min. Courtesy of the artists</p>

No. 38: Digital Entanglements

Managing editors: Krzysztof Pijarski, Tytus Szabelski-Różniak

Ben Joseph Andrews, Emma Roberts, Turbulence: Jamais Vu, 2023. VR experience, 10 min. Courtesy of the artists

This issue was supported by the Film School in Łódź, SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanisties, Warsaw, and Ministry of Education and Science in the framework of "Development of Academic Journals," project number RCN/SP/0698/2021/12, and also under the Ministry of Education and Science program within the framework of the “Regional Initiative of Excellence” for the years 2019-2023, project number 023/RID/2018/19, funding sum PLN 11 865 100.

Table of Contents

Introduction

  1. Digital Entanglements

    ”Digital Entanglements”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 38 (2024), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2023.38.2891

    Introduction to the thematic issue on digital entanglements. The point of departure is the project by Ben Joseph Andrews and Emma Roberts entitled Turbulence that renders the experience of jamais vu: “the sudden appearance of reality no longer being real.”

    keywords: entanglement; digital; VR; technology; agency; contemporary art; immersion

Viewpoint

  1. All Hardware Sucks, All Software Sucks

    Xtreme Girl (Lena Peplińska i Laura Radzewicz)
    Xtreme Girl (Lena Peplińska i Laura Radzewicz), ”All Hardware Sucks, All Software Sucks”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 38 (2024), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2023.38.2846

    An essay by artist duo Xtreme Girl on the capture of the free culture of the Internet by late capitalism, the potential of decentralization and the myths of the tech circles.

    keywords: networks; freedom; bitcoin; utopia; crypto; information; visual art

  2. Object 452

    Letta Shtohryn, Julie-Michèle Morin
    Letta Shtohryn, Julie-Michèle Morin, ”Object 452”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 38 (2024), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2023.38.2866

    A presentetion of Letta Shtohryn's Чули? Чули (Chuly? Chuly), a project that blends performative video gameplay with choreography to explore manipulative narratives and the embodiment of online personas.

Close Up

  1. From Avatars to Hybrid Bodies: Postdualist and Posthumanist Approaches to the Anthropology of Virtual Reality

    Jan Waligórski
    Jan Waligórski, ”From Avatars to Hybrid Bodies”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 38 (2024), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2023.38.2848

    The dynamic development of virtual reality (VR) technology is reconfiguring the relationship between humans and their avatars in virtual worlds. Physical bodies and spaces become entangled with their digital counterparts and are engaged in events within virtual environments, necessitating a shift in the approach to conducting anthropological research in VR. This essay challenges digital dualism through the exploration of the hybrid nature of embodiment in VR. The aim of the text is to lay the groundwork for a postdualistic and posthumanist approach to VR anthropology, which emphasizes the entanglements between humans and technologies, and between physical and digital bodies, blurring the boundaries between these dichotomies. In this approach, I conceptualize VR users as cyborg assemblages, emerging in intra-actions between humans, technologies, and digital bodies, thereby highlighting the agency of non-humans in co-shaping their hybrid somaticity.

    keywords: virtual reality, anthropology, posthumanism, digital dualism, hybrid body, avatar

  2. After AI Art

    Joanna Zylinska
    Joanna Zylinska, ”After AI Art”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 38 (2024), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2023.38.2870

    This article delves into the intricate relationship between humanity and artificial intelligence or machine learning models, exploring what the author calls the “AI loop,” a conceptual framework describing the current and upcoming co-emergence of humans with AI/ML technologies, analogically to historical, reciprocal entanglements between humans and technosphere. Through a critical examination of AI’s impact on artistic practice and creativity, the article challenges prevailing narratives of AI’s transformative potential while proposing a nuanced understanding of an “after AI art.” Drawing on papers published by Oxford Internet Institute and Creative AI Lab, the author contextualizes AI/ML within broader socio-political and philosophical frameworks, questioning conventional notions of creativity and human agency. The article advocates for a re-evaluation of the trajectory of art post-AI, emphasizing the need for inclusive, critical, careful, and ethical consideration of engagement with AI/ML technologies in artistic practice and beyond.

    keywords: art; artificial intelligence; creativity; machine learning; ethics

  3. Press Start to Work: Gamification and Precarisation of Gig Work in Contemporary Media Art

    Olympia Contopidis
    Olympia Contopidis, ”Press Start to Work”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 38 (2024), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2023.38.2869

    Gig work platforms such as Lyft, Uber, Wolt, and Flink undertook intense efforts to make their work more ‘fun,’ with the aim of motivating their workers and making them more efficient. This paper looks at how platform capitalism intertwines the gamification and precarization of labor, leading to an increased blurring of work and leisure. Employing the video works Delivery Dancer’s Sphere (2022) by Ayoung Kim and Platform (2022) by Johannes Büttner as case studies, the text examines how the gamification and precarization of labor through delivery platforms are addressed and critiqued in contemporary media art and how both Kim and Büttner utilize gaming aesthetics and mechanisms.

    keywords: gamification; platform capitalism; precarization; art

  4. ‘Sitting In Front of My PC’. Working in Front of the Screen in the Era of Digital Capitalism

    Miłosz Wojtyna
    Miłosz Wojtyna, ”‘Sitting In Front of My PC’”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 38 (2024), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2023.38.2868

    The author is interested in the canonical visual forms that accompany labour in digital capitalism - that is, an economic-information-cognitive order based on screens, information and attention. He therefore analyses what labour looks like today where screens are necessary to perform it; what are the visual dimensions of that labour; how labour is represented by artists and popular culture. In the article, he discusses the liberalisation of the aesthetics of the remote working environment as a place that does not belong to the employer; the fetishisation of the aesthetics of the workstation and office space in marketing discourses; the simulation of physical presence through visual effects; the compulsion of visualisation in work communication; ‘Zoom fatigue’ and corporate worker fatigue; and the visual dimensions of waiting. He illustrates her discussion of these issues with examples from cultural texts.

    keywords: digital capitalism; screen; labour; visualisation; aesthetics; computer

  5. Who Has the Agency? A Photoessay on Metropolitan Smartphones

    Mirosław Filiciak, Paweł Starzec
    Mirosław Filiciak, Paweł Starzec, ”Who Has the Agency?”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 38 (2024), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2023.38.2867

    The article is devoted to a critical analysis of the agency of technology through the example of smartphones. Starting from infrastructural studies and empirical material recording user practices, the authors show how smartphones, as central elements of contemporary communication networks, shape both intimate and social aspects of life. Photography here makes it possible to reveal the invisible—and sometimes simply deliberately concealed—connections between technology and everyday life. It thus acts as a research tool that attempts to overcome the limitations associated with the lack of transparency of the area under analysis. English translation will follow soon.

    keywords: technology; agency; smartphones; communication networks; everyday life

  6. Pipeline Ecologies. Rural Entanglements of Fiber-Optic Cables. 

    Nicole Starosielski
    Nicole Starosielski, ”Pipeline Ecologies. ”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 38 (2024), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2023.38.2886

    Polish translation of a chapter from Sustainable Media: Critical Approaches to Media and Environment (pp. 38-55). Taylor and Francis Inc. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315794877 by Nicole Starosielski entitled Pipeline Ecologies. Rural Entanglements of Fiber-Optic Cables.

    keywords: infrastructure; environment; communication networks; rurality

Panorama

  1. Drawing a Line

    Mischa Twitchin
    Mischa Twitchin, ”Drawing a Line”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 38 (2024), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2023.38.2871

    The text delves into the history of Tadeusz Kantor’s performance The Dividing Line and takes it as a basis for further reflections on performance art and its entanglements. In the view of the author, it is Kantor’s piece that after over half a century continues to offer critical and paradoxical implications for archival research, as a paradigm of and for thinking through the potential substitutions of art and documentation in an historical understanding of performance.

    keywords: Tadeusz Kantor; performance art; archives; documentation; photography

Perspectives

  1. Immersion. Between simulation and re-entanglement

    Felix Stalder
    Felix Stalder, ”Immersion”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 38 (2024), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2023.38.2872

    Immersion in the arts is often associated with complex, cutting-edge technology. However, this technology-focused view limits our understanding of immersion. Immersion should be seen as the normal state of perception, while non-immersion is a historically and culturally specific mode created by “old media.” The aesthetics of contemporary immersion are shaped by digitization and climate breakdown, leading to two main directions: creating simulations or experiences of re-entanglement with the wider world. The idea that the world is in front of us goes against human experience, but was created by a techno-cultural environment, with the central perspective and printing press as key elements. Digitization and climate change challenge this notion and the belief that the world is populated by passive objects. The crisis of classic Western aesthetics is not new, but its articulation had little impact outside the arts. The question of the aesthetics of immersion is urgent, as different aesthetics make different aspects of digitization and climate change accessible to our perception, shaping how we experience the world and our place within it.

    keywords: technology; immersion; aesthetics; digitization; climate change

Snapshots

  1. A Book of Excursions Through the Unknown Lands of Artificial Intelligence. On Kate Crawford's "Atlas of Artificial Intelligence"

    Ewa Drygalska
    Ewa Drygalska, ”A Book of Excursions”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 38 (2024), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2023.38.2865

    Review of the Polish translation of Kate Crawford’s book Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence.

    keywords: artificial intelligence; Kate Crawford; extractivism; society

  2. Notes on the Margins of Agnieszka Pajączkowska's book "Nieprzeźroczyste. Historie chłopskiej fotografii"

    Ewa Manikowska
    Ewa Manikowska, ”Notes on the Margins”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 38 (2024), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2023.38.2864

    Critical analysis of Agnieszka Pajączkowska's Nieprzezroczyste. Historie chłopskiej fotografii (2023), a book of essays on paesants' photographs. 

    keywords: photography; oral history; peasantry; people’s history