alice smith

“I realized that internet policy-makers and internet artists have similar interests, but different skill sets. Internet artists make work that questions themes of data extraction, surveillance, provenance, identity, and this open display creates a cultural shift that then provides enough momentum for a policy shift. Then once it moves into that

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I’m curious about the way it’s impacting our inner monologues. The constant self-analysis, the picking-apart, the internal work . In collusion with capitalism and social media and the digital panopticon, seeing ourselves through a therapized lens means regarding the self as the ultimate project. It’s easy to forget there are other ways to live.

We don’t tell stories anymore.

We sell them.

Wrapped in rhythm. Dressed in sincerity. Built for reach.

And if you listen closely enough, you can hear the moan of the algorithm.

Curators slow down the unending scroll and provide their followers with a way of savoring culture, rather than just inhaling it, developing a sense of appreciation.

In the last ten years, pattern recognition has become a cultural activity. You see that on the bad end, like QAnon, and on the more fun end with the pervasiveness of trend forecasting.

Algorithmic recommendations can be formulaic – if a person is creating a playlist, there’s always the potential for chaos, which is kind of fun.

It’s long past time that we realized these systems are not benefitting culture. Creators and consumers alike are pushed into preset formats that we may ultimately have no organic interest in. By giving in to algorithmic feeds, we are letting tech companies determine our tastes.