On Thursday 11 June 2020, P.B. de Vries will defend her PhD dissertation, entitled: ‘Algorithmic Anxiety in Contemporary Art. A Kierkegaardian Inquiry into the Imaginary of Possibility’.
The principle aim of this dissertation is to analyse what underpins the anxieties about facial recognition algorithms, trading algorithms and search engine algorithms. It focuses on a limited number of artworks, made by Western artists, that engage explicitly with these three types of algorithms and that have circulated widely and repeatedly in a wide range of thematised group exhibitions on different aspects of algorithmic culture over the past eight years throughout Europe, Canada, and the Americas. The second aim of this dissertation is to develop a concept to theorise the anxieties braided around these three types of algorithms which are made manifest and rendered visible in the artworks it analyses: the concept of algorithmic anxiety.
The PhD defences will not take place publicly in the Senate Hall or Professor Andries Queridoroom due to the coronavirus. The candidates will defend their thesis online.