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The Invisible Lives of Selfies
Full text linkThe selfie has rapidly emerged as a significant aspect of visual culture. Selfies can be considered a kind of self-portrait, with roots in artistic self-representation, popular photography, and digital imaging. However, the visual image is only one, albeit crucial, component of the selfie. How that image circulates, how it is consumed and commented upon constitutes key considerations of how selfies work. But the vast majority of actions that affect selfies occur without much knowledge of the selfie taker. In this way, selfies implicate a host of concerns beyond the representational, including commercial, ethical, and political issues arising from their status as data.
The selfie, while clearly a visual phenomenon, also includes data traces, facial recognition and tagging systems, data tracking and analytics that are invisible to most selfie makers and consumers. These back-end processes invoke multiple concerns in the realm of privacy, surveillance, and security, in part due to the enormous amount of information – data – posted selfies contain.
This article focuses on the “invisible” aspects of the selfie, turning the gaze to understanding what we don’t see when we look at, post, and comment on selfies. The analysis reveals what lies beneath selfies, asking: What is being done with selfie data? Several aspects are discussed, including how selfies produce machine readable data, used by programmers, marketers, and governments. AI filters and facial recognition software makes an appearance, along with their inherent racial and visual biases - mirrored, reflected, and caught in the shadows. Finally, this article frames filters, data selfies and the face as particular genres of visual culture increasingly linked with algorithms, filters, and data, to question the cultural, political, and social implications of the selfie
Transmutação em Luz e Som
No full textA Max/MSP/Jitter workshop entitled “Transmutação em Luz e Som” (Transmutation into Light and Sound) at the University of Coimbra, Portugal: Sala do Carvão - Casa das Caldeiras, Teatro Académico de Gil Vicente
From Laughter to Lament: Mapping the Rise and Fall of Humour in Hong Kong Activism 2019–2020
No full textThis article examines the emergence, transformation, and eventual decline of humour in the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protest movement through discourse analysis, supported by first-hand participation and semi-structured interviews. It argues that humour initially offered temporary superiority over authority, fostered solidarity, and shaped lived experiences of collective resistance. However, the classist and meritocratic implications embedded in protest humour fractured the movement. The deliberate overlook within the jokes further undermines the validity of the humour. The nationhood invoked through humour also became a tacit test of allegiance. Externally, escalating state violence and the imposition of the National Security Law rendered humour increasingly untenable, shifting affective registers from laughter to grief, trauma, and self-censorship. By mapping this transition, the article demonstrates how humour can move from an empowering practice to a divisive and even detrimental force, contributing to broader debates on affect, censorship, and the politics of expression under authoritarianism
Operationalizing Semantics from Domain Diagrams
Full text linkThis paper presents AMIDOL-x, a framework for machine-assisted extraction of formal semantics from domain specific semi-formal diagrams, directly contributing to the field of Explainable AI. It details a novel approach that leverages domain-specific ontological languages and a common intermediate representation to transform intuitive, yet ambiguous, system diagrams into rigorous, executable models. This process serves as a critical modeling feedback mechanism, where the generation of formal semantics enables the automated synthesis of actionable knowledge and prognostic queries, thereby empowering domain experts with a precise and performable understanding of complex system behaviors and facilitating informed decision-making
Firecrackers: Female Photographers Now
No full textA survey of the greatest female photographers working today, created as a platform to showcase important work that might otherwise be marginalized in the still male-dominated photography community.Building upon the foundations of Rogers' Firecracker platform, this book brings together photography that encompasses an eclectic variety of styles, techniques and locations, from Alma Haser’s futuristic series of portraits that use origami to create 3D sculptures within the frame, to Laura El-Tantawy’s filmic and intensely personal series on political protest in Cairo. There is a recurring theme throughout the book that serves to unite these extraordinary women and their work: the exploration of individual stories and under-discussed subjects, seen by fresh eyes
Liking the Met Gala: Towards a Quantification of Organisational Legitimacy through Instagram
No full textGrounded in foundational organisational legitimacy theory, this research examines the role of Instagram Likes as a foundational metric for organisational legitimacy, proposing a novel framework that positions digital engagement as a modern-day opinion poll (Bitektine & Haack, 2015). Using the Met Gala as a case study, the research explores how cultural institutions navigate the convergence of exclusivity and digital democratisation to maintain relevance in a participatory era. Through a mixed-methods approach, combining quantitative analysis of Instagram data with qualitative insights into algorithmic mediation and stakeholder dynamics, the research develops a new legitimacy model that operationalises Likes as substantive indicators of alignment with stakeholder expectations. The findings demonstrate that Instagram Likes transcend superficial popularity, serving as critical markers of legitimacy influenced by thematic resonance, temporal trends, and algorithmic factors. By challenging the dominance of sentiment analysis, the research offers a replicable, data-driven framework for evaluating digital legitimacy and highlights the transformative role of visual-centric platforms in shaping public perceptions. The Met Gala’s strategic use of Instagram reveals the interplay between democratisation and exclusivity, showcasing how digital platforms enable organisations to foster stakeholder engagement while preserving cultural authority. The research not only advances legitimacy theory by integrating digital metrics into traditional frameworks but also provides practical insights for organisations navigating the complexities of participatory platforms. Ultimately, it positions Likes as central to understanding legitimacy in the digital age, bridging theoretical gaps and offering actionable strategies for cultural and organisational sustainability
Poetry in the Motions of the Education Engine
No full textOnline Program Management (OPM) is a partnership model that enables universities to delegate the construction and delivery of online courses to a specialist company. Universities provide subject-specific academic expertise and the OPM does the rest. Some see the OPM model as an immoral marketisation of education, whereas others see it as a noble and highly effective method for expanding access to a huge number of students who cannot study on-campus. At University of the Arts London, we have hybridised the OPM and the art school to create our own thing: a diverse team of highly capable people with extensive experience of both the OPM way and art school pedagogy, collaborating with UAL’s six colleges to build large-scale fully online art and design courses. This endeavour is called UAL Online (UALO). Alongside UALO’s Commercial and Production divisions sits the Academic Strategy team, whose job is to interrogate, contemplate, guide and support this enterprise, and help ensure ‘UAL-ness’ is not lost in translation. Using a research method based on Grounded Theory, the Academic Strategy team have been conducting open-ended interviews with the key people involved in the UALO project. We have had fascinating conversations with the individuals leading on production, commercial, data analytics, learning design, project management, student success, admissions, marketing and senior management, as well as our college-based academics. In this video, we present a poetic interpretation of our findings which reveals the feelings and passions of the human cogs in our course-making engine. Spoiler: everyone cares most about the student
Bump
No full textPresented in Motile Attachments, a solo exhibition at Pracownia Portretu. The exhibition is organized around a wooden structure that is ten linear meters and a series of works that integrate handwoven ratchet straps to fasten, tether, hoist, or cinch together found and made objects into sculptural assemblies. The textile elements might be viewed as accessories, yet they are essential to holding the sculptures together. The exhibition addresses how textiles carry the histories of knowledge circulating through the labour and time that accumulates in and around our varied bodies, through carrier-objects, and in embodied social activities like labour, language, and movement. In what sense do such transmitted forms accessorise our bodies—and when do our bodies become accessories to processes of circulation? Motile Attachments extends new sculptural logics of gathering and moving—metaphorically, historically, and materially. Together the works propose possible approaches to the social accessory as relational form. It moves
Motile Attachments
No full textPresented in Motile Attachments, a solo exhibition at Pracownia Portretu. The exhibition is organized around a wooden structure that is ten linear meters and a series of works that integrate handwoven ratchet straps to fasten, tether, hoist, or cinch together found and made objects into sculptural assemblies. The textile elements might be viewed as accessories, yet they are essential to holding the sculptures together. The exhibition addresses how textiles carry the histories of knowledge circulating through the labour and time that accumulates in and around our varied bodies, through carrier-objects, and in embodied social activities like labour, language, and movement. In what sense do such transmitted forms accessorise our bodies—and when do our bodies become accessories to processes of circulation? Motile Attachments extends new sculptural logics of gathering and moving—metaphorically, historically, and materially. Together the works propose possible approaches to the social accessory as relational form. It moves
Correspondence
No full textPresented in Motile Attachments, a solo exhibition at Pracownia Portretu. The exhibition is organized around a wooden structure that is ten linear meters and a series of works that integrate handwoven ratchet straps to fasten, tether, hoist, or cinch together found and made objects into sculptural assemblies. The textile elements might be viewed as accessories, yet they are essential to holding the sculptures together. The exhibition addresses how textiles carry the histories of knowledge circulating through the labour and time that accumulates in and around our varied bodies, through carrier-objects, and in embodied social activities like labour, language, and movement. In what sense do such transmitted forms accessorise our bodies—and when do our bodies become accessories to processes of circulation? Motile Attachments extends new sculptural logics of gathering and moving—metaphorically, historically, and materially. Together the works propose possible approaches to the social accessory as relational form. It moves