Chroma Key Dreams: Algorithmic Visibility, Fleshy Images and Scenes of Recognition

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

  • Daniela Agostinho
The increasing pervasiveness of datafication across social life is significantly challenging the scope and meanings of visibility. How do new modes of data capture compel us to rethink the notion of visibility, no longer understood as an ocular-based perceptual field, but as a multifaceted site of power? Focusing in particular on technologies of algorithmic recognition, the article argues that in order to understand the broad stakes of visibility under algorithmic life, the intersection between algorithmic recognition and the notion of social recognizability needs to be further theorized. In dialogue with the work of Sondra Perry, and drawing on contributions from feminist and critical race theories, the article revisits theoretical debates on racialized visibility within photography and film to show how racializing processes are inscribed in digital and algorithmic
technologies. In reading through these debates, the article suggests that visibility, as a racial formation, is always already subjected to an algorithmic logic. Through the analysis of Sondra Perry’s work, the article sketches out a political ontology of the image premised on the intersection between computation and the markings of the flesh as a possible way to think through the stakes of visibility under algorithmic life.
Original languageEnglish
JournalPhilosophy of Photography
Volume9
Issue number2
Pages (from-to)131-155
Number of pages25
ISSN2040-3682
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2018

    Research areas

  • Faculty of Humanities - Sondra Perry, algorithms, blackness, flesh, opacity, race, recognition, visibility

ID: 211910067