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algoliterary-encounters

Algologs

algorithms in the age of repredictions



Algolit

Algologs is part a series of events and gatherings that gravitate around the Brussels-based artists, activists and designers that make up Algolit. Algolit is a workgroup initiated by Constant, an arts organization in Brussels that works on the topics of free software and feminism. The Algolit group started in 2012 with the interest to find cross-overs between algorithms and literature. Some of its current members are also here tonight! Yes! [perhaps we could ask Gijs and An if they want to talk a bit about Algolit? - would be nice to present that part altogether? We can expand with examples on OuLiPo]

Algolit is inspired by OuLiPo: Ouvroir de littérature potentielle, another group, this time of writers, with its roots in the 60s, which created literary work by setting constraints for themselves. Some famous works are the novel Exercises in Style by Raymond Queneau, which takes one text and rewrites it in 99 different ways or the novel La Disparition by Georges Perec, which omits the letter e.

Johanna Drucker reflects on the work of OuLiPo in an open letter published on ubuweb that she called 'Un-Visual and Conceptual':
One of the great lessons of OuLiPo is that by inventing constraints we are made aware of the already existing ones. OuLiPo challenged linguistic constraints by accelerating or exhausting them and writing poetry with them. If we were to bring back the OuLiPian ethos into today's world, which is both assisted and plagued by algorithms, what would it look like?
What constraints are inherently embedded in algorithmic systems?
How can you speak back to an algorithm in a self-conscious way?

Algolit subjects

Previous Algolit projects looked into — among other things: the quicksort algorithm to sort a row of people, a script that creates infinite reiterated definitions based on the online dictionary dataset Wordnet, markov-chains recipes based on the text generation algorithm that is often used to create spam emails, and a Frankenstein Chatbot Parade for which a set of bots was written to reproduce the novel of Frankenstein. 

The group decided in 2016 that it wanted to study text-based machine learning processes and decision making algorithms: a field where different algorithms are combined in order to search for patterns in text and make predictions. Last november, this resulted in a four-day event in Brussels with a small exhibition of machine learning tool explorations, guided tours a lecture evening, and two workshops. Algologs is a continuation of this series of public events, where we want to connect to new practices that relate to the questions we are facing in our own sessions. The events are open to anyone regardless of their familiarity level with machine learning or coding in general.

Recipes

For 2018, the Algolit group will continue in its study of machine learning elements, but this time we will take the process apart and focus on seperate elements, such as datasets, counting techniques, vectors, or the idea of multiple dimensions. 

To do this, we will look back at OuLiPo, and use the format of recipes in the upcoming Algolit sessions. A first tryout of this new format happened a few weeks ago, in an Algolit session in which we looked at the subject of datasets: what does it mean to make custom and self-downloaded datasets and how could the act of gathering textual material be a political work? Notes from our session can be found on our wiki. :) An example recipe is:

With this focus on recipes, and by placing one technique/subject central to the Algolit sessions, we wanted to provide the option for jump-in jump out participation, and approach this complex topic with multiple voices. With this, we aim to open the process to people who do not have the availability to attend every session, but are interested in the subject matter. 

Tomorrow we will host a second iteration in this new-Algolit style, and look into counting techniques, quantification of text and counting words. We will use a 'famous' machine learning set of tools: word2vec, to look at a specific way to transform words into numbers. 

Algologs

The terms Algologs originates from the wish to focus on different practices or attitudes towards algorithmic mechanisms. Together with you, we wanted to log different ways of working with algorithms.

The origin of the subtitle of this event, algorithms in the age of repredictions, is a reference to Walter Benjamin's well-known article - The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, as you might have guessed. The essay became so popular that many other authors played on the title. To give just a few examples:

    The work of art in the age of digital recombination - Jos de Mul
    The Work of Art in the Age of Deindustrialization - Jasper Bernes
    The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Assassination - Saud Al-Zaid
    The Work of Art in the Age of Amazon - Ben Mauk

The expanding reach and current relevance of Benjamin's text has been maintained through the many iterations it has had in current media theory environments. Each new reinterpretation of the title comes with a reference to the original piece, thus reinforcing its position in the canon. 

Since much of the discussion of tonight will be about copies, reiterations, backpropagations and predictions about the future, we are also not letting Walter Benjamin rest in peace. Tonight we will be looking at how one can go from reproduction to reprediction. How does the past influence the future in algorithmic judgement? In machine learning, for example, one needs a corpus to train and test a model with. What goes into the corpus will influence the worldview of the model. And sometimes these algorithms end up dictating our future way of living as well. [double with the machine learning explanation below]

Terms

The word algorithms might come up for quite some times tonight, so we thought it would be good to shortly introduce this term before we go on. Algorithms could be seen as a list of instructions that are executed from top to bottom. These instructions can be as simple as listing items in a folder, or become more complex when they involve mathematical or statistical formulas. You could also see an algorithm as a recipe, where you need a set of ingredients and instructions to fullfill the recipe and produce the outcome you are hoping for. And when we keep the analogy to cooking, we could also say that every recipe lives within a very specific culture, with their own ideas about ingredients, quality and taste. :) 

Another term that will come up during these two days is machine learning. Also often called AI, which is not reffering to anything different than machine learning, but comes with a lot of confusing expectations/dilemmas :). We have already mentioned that the Algolit worksessions until now have dealt with this topic, and tomorrow we will scratch further in that direction, but for now it suffices to say that it is part of the field of "predictive statistics": they take information from what has happened in the past, create a model of the world as they have understood it and use it to make predictions about what could happen in other circumstances. As these algorithms become part of our daily infrastructure, from hospitals to the court or the power grid, their opaqueness makes it difficult to trace back their judgement calls in making predictions. And then there is the issue of bias as well. The models that these algorithms build are heavily informed by what is already out there, so often they reinforce and augment systemic problems.

Tonight

Tonight, as an addition to what we will do tomorrow in the Algolit session, we wanted to organise a shared conversation to bring different types of algorithmic practices together. The speakers will touch on many issues, not necessarily connected to machine learning, but how we can familiarise ourselves with the working mechanisms of these algorithms and intervene with questions.

Cristina will introduce the concept of Infrapunctures, or what can be perceived as algorithmic stress relief. She has been looking at bot projects as ways to intervene in infrastructures and tonight she will share her findings. She will talk about political bots and other methods of familiarising oneself with the materiality and sociality of an infrastructure.

The first year practitioners of the experimental publishing master of the Piet Zwart Institute will elaborate on their current projects in the framework of OuNuPo - Ouvroir de Numérisation Potentielle. In the last 2.5 month they worked with and around a self-made bookscanner as a central tool. They started OuNuPo with a research period that manifested in a set of readers around bookscanning culture, ways of knowledge (re)production and feminism. Next to that, they explored the potential of the 'scanned book' in individual software experiments. The official launch of the OuNoPo project is scheduled on Wednesday 28th of March in Worm. But for tonight they were so brave and kind to share their first outcomes with us. They will each demonstrate or present their research trajectory, after which there is a moment for questions, response and an open conversation.

After their demonstrations, we will end tonight with a performance and presentation by Marloes de Valk. In We Are Going to Take Over the World, One Robot at a Time she will tell a tale of wonder and disembodiment, disruption and opportunism, nudging and mass-surveilance. Marloes is a software artist and writer in the post-despair stage of coping with the threat of global warming and being spied on by the devices surrounding her. 



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