ARTH 384 Theories of Representation: Technology and Power - The Vision Machines of Visual Culture

• Fridays, 11:45am-2:15pm
• Online: Access through Moodle
• Instructor: Tracy Valcourt

In this course, we will examine the origins and operations of increasingly ubiquitous sensing technologies and the manner in which they contribute to contemporary visual culture on visible and invisible registers. Tools such as facial recognition systems, AI, CCTV cameras, automatic number plate recognition cameras mounted at intersections, algorithms, body cameras, smartphones, social media, drone surveillance, are tracking human (and nonhuman) movement and behaviour and assembling clues to predict future patterns. Most of the images produced by such tracking devices are invisible to human eyes as they are made by machines to be read by other machines. In this course, we will look both at the practical and often problematic applications of today’s sensing technologies and survey the work of contemporary artists who are interrogating or appropriating such technologies to reveal how globalized citizens willingly or unknowingly contribute to a surveillance society, reinforcing its inherent top-down power structure, as they act as participatory “eyes” and unsuspecting, compliant, or resistive subjects of observation.