This session is facilitated by Mimi Onuoha
About this session
To classify is human, and increasingly classification is algorithmic. We are grouped and sorted by models, computers, and algorithms. These algorithmic classifications are more likely to be perceived as true than human sortings, regardless of how arbitrary they are. And things that have been perceived as true have real and true consequences.
Us Aggregated, 3.0 is a single channel video displaying a collection of photos from the artist’s family’s personal collection set alongside images scraped from Google’s library that have been algorithmically categorized as similar. The work is an ode to the quiet issues nestled within the routine practice of classification: what does it mean to be seen as similar to another? Is there some part of us that yearns for the meaning-making that sorting provides? Would it be different if we were in control of the process?