The image is a machine

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ISSN (Prin t): 2245-75 93 • ISSN (PDF ): 2245-76 07 Publish ed by DARC, Aar hus Unive rsity
Txt No. www.aprja.net
A Peer-Reviewed Newspaper
MACHINE FEELING
Free
Volume 8, Issue 1

Machine Feeling
Editorial
This publication presents abstracts
and abstractions developed through
a workshop held at University of
Cambridge, and organized in collab-
oration between transmediale festival,
Aarhus University, and Cambridge
Digital Humanities Learning Pro-
gramme. It presents a critical inquiry
into new technologies of feeling, rec-
ognizing that digital culture has be-
come instrumental for capturing and
managing what Raymond Williams’
would once have called “structures
of feeling”—referring to lived experi-
ences and cultural expressions,
distinct from supposedly fixed social
products and institutions. It focus-
es specifically on the domain of ma-
chine learning and on the ability
of technologies to capture and struc-
ture feelings and experiences that
are active, in flux, and in the present.
The authors further explore this
line of thinking within the field of ma-
chine learning. For example, in the
ways that automated experiences of
sensing, seeing, hearing, and reading
begin to produce knowledge through
the capture of everyday styles, ex-
pressions, preferences, sentiments,
and so forth—the very means that
Williams alludes to. If, in general,
machine learning appears to lack an
affective dimension, then in what
ways are we to understand its reso-
lute and concerted pursuit of this?
What old registers of processing cul-
ture and organizing time, space
and power does it build on? What
potential new sensibilities and struc-
tures of feeling may arise in such
normalized registers of our habits?
What new cultural and social forms
and practices emerge in the coming
together of machine learning and
structures of feeling? The contribu-
tions all relate to such questions and
serves as an invitation to further
reflect and engage with them.
Participants in the workshop were
Mitra Azar, Anja Breljak, Michela
De Carlo, Maria Dada, Iain Emsley,
Malthe Stavning Erslev, Daniel Chavez
Heras, Tomasz Hollanek, Maike Klein,
Rosemary Lee, Carleigh Morgan,
Carman Ng, Sascha Pohflepp, Irina
Raskin, Tiara Roxanne, Rebecca
Uliasz, Tanja Wiehn, Brett Zehner,
with Anne Alexander, Christian Ulrik
Andersen, Alan Blackwell, Geoff
Cox, Jennifer Gabrys, Kristoffer
Gansing, Leonardo Impett, Matteo
Pasquinelli, Søren Pold, Winnie
Soon, Magda Tyzlik-Carver, Martin
Zeilinger.
The images in the publication show
presumed faces generated adver-
sarially from a combination of photo-
graphs of the participants and two
computer vision datasets: Animals
with Attributes 2 (for taxonomic rec-
ognition) and CelebA (for age and
gender prediction).
Work in progress can be found at
https://machinefeeling2018.home.
blog. Following transmediale festival,
longer papers will be presented
in the upcoming issue of
A Peer-
Reviewed Journal About_ Machine
Feeling
at www.aprja.net.

www.aprja.net Txt No.
MACHINE FEELING:
A Peer-Reviewed Newspaper
Volume 8, Issue 1, 2019
ISSN (Prin t): 2245-75 93 • ISSN (PDF ): 2245-76 07 Publish ed by DARC, Aar hus Unive rsity
Surprised
Sad
Angry
Happy
SEEING THINGS 18 / 19
Rosemary Lee
The image is a machine

The image drives the machines
which produce the image′.
The image may be more of a
complex ecosystem like a pond
than a mechanism.
The image may be mechanical,
electrical, chemical, biological.
The image may be automated or
autopoietic.
The image′ is latent in the
instructions for its performance.
The image is not reducible
to source code.
The image has the potential for
variability of expression.
The image′ need not be built.
Non-expression is a potential
expression.
The image is a database.
It takes in information and spits
out electromagnetic waves.
The image may or may not be
visual.
The image′ may be instantiated
in other forms, such as sound.
Sound-image′.
Too much concern is lavished on
the image′, the face.
Of greater consequence is the
commodification of the image,
human capital.
The image forgoes scarcity in
favour of the fecund circulation of
images′.
The image may populate the
world with innumerable images′.
The image′ has no inherent value.
The image is a producer of value.
The image′ is derived from the
distillation of societal value
systems.
The image is fat with the
intellectual, creative, and labour
value it has consumed.
The image may or may not look
back.
The image may be used as a
mode of interpretation of images′.
The image constrains what
images′ may be produced from it.
The design of images directly
conditions the production
of images′.
The image is concerned with
method.
The image is processual,
procedural, a practice.
The image is a machine.
The image is a machine
Rosemary Lee

MACHINE FEELING:
A Peer-Reviewed Newspaper
Volume 8, Issue 1
2019
ISSN (Print): 2245-7593
ISSN (PDF): 2245-7607
Editors:
Geoff Cox and Christian Ulrik Andersen
Published by:
Digital Aesthetics Research Centre, Aarhus University
in collaboration with Cambridge Digital Humanities
Learning Programme and transmediale
Design:
The Laboratory of Manuel Bürger:
Simon Schindele, Bárbara Acevedo Strange,
Manuel Bürger
Images:
Leonardo Impett and
The Laboratory of Manuel Bürger
Print:
Gallery Print, Berlin
CC license:
‘Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike’

Editorial
Machine Feeling
01
Anja Breljak & Woebot
The Rise of the Af fective Machine II
(Will I feel better?)
02
Maike Klein
Making Sense of Affectivity:
Encounter with a Robotic Cat
03
Iain Emsley
Reading with Machines
04
Irina Raskin
Un/Making Sense
05
Tiara Roxanne
Digital Colonization: De-Coding
the Body
06
Brett Zehner
Seizing the Means of Subjection
07
Sascha Pohflepp
Anthropo-de-centric Encounters
08
Rebecca Uliasz
Alien Desire: An Economy of
Feeling Machines
09
Maria Dada
Digital Models: Cannibalising the
Remnants of the Map
10
Michela De Carlo
Synthetic Bodies and Feeling
generators
11
Carman Ng
Affecting Reality:
The (Phantom) Web of Games,
Trauma, and Imaginaries
12
Tanja Wiehn
Feeling the Algorithm Working
13
Malthe Stavning Erslev
I forced a bot to read over
1000 articles from open-access
journals and then asked it to
write an article of its own.
Here is the abstract.
14
Martin Zeilinger
Feeling Generators
15
Mitra Azar
This is Cosmo-Phenomenology
16
Tomasz Hollanek
Non-user-friendly
17
Daniel Chavez Heras
Computational Spectatorship
18
Rosemary Lee
The image is a machine
19
Carleigh Morgan
Run Diagnostics? Rethinking the
Aetiology of Glitches
Table of Contents