Under the Calculative Gaze is a paperback adaptation of Sanela Jahić’s artistic research that investigates how socially-applied technological tools are not only directly intertwined with unresolved injustices of our current system, but actually accelerate a transition towards authoritarianism that is present in the technology industry itself, in the politics of various countries and institutions, and in the rise of far-right political movements.
The English version of the book contains an essay No to AI, Yes to a Non-Fascist Apparatus by Dan McQuillan, Lecturer in Creative and Social Computing at Goldsmiths, University of London, who discusses how AI reinforces existing power dynamics and reinforces social divisions by hierarchically categorising us.
A selection of digital graphics from the 1s and 0s, Haves and Have-Nots series, presenting many concrete examples of discriminatory and harmful practices arising from probabilistic algorithms and applications of artificial intelligence systems. The ability of AI to understand society and classify it into actuarial risk categories is often used to restrict access to credit, subsidies, employment, healthcare and pain relief for certain groups of individuals, and to prevent the crossing of international borders.
The design of the graphics and the book, by Jaka Neon, is based on IBM’s open-source Carbon Design System. This decision to create a highly standardised pseudo-marketing environment is yet another effort to address the euphoria around artificial intelligence and its socially beneficial uses – both of which are reckless – and to refute it by using the very language in which it is usually marketed.
The book also presents descriptions with clips from the videos Workers’ Initiative: Union and Resistance, which present collective practices of self-organisation in which social and political disadvantage gives rise to solidarity regardless of differences and beyond models of algorithmic governmentality. The interviewees in the videos, Magda Malinowska and Agnieszka Mróz, representatives of the popular trade union Inicjatywa Pracownicza in Poland, shared their experiences of working in an Amazon warehouse, of workers’ organising and movement, struggle, solidarity and workers’ power.
The book and the project Under the Calculative Gaze, which premiered in January at the Aksioma Project Space and in March as part of the group exhibition konSekvence at the Cukrarna Gallery, were produced within the framework of the Platform for Contemporary Investigative Art konS.
The book can be ordered online. If you would like to avoid postage, you are welcome to visit the Aksioma Project Space (Komenskega 18) between 12 noon and 6 pm on Tuesdays and Fridays.
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Sanela Jahić
Under the Calculative Gaze
Editor: Janez Fakin Janša
Editorial assistant: Maja Burja
Translator and language editor: Miha Šuštar
Design and layout: Jaka Neon, based on IBM’s open-source Carbon Design System
Print: Collegium Graphicum
Number of copies: 300
Format: 10.5 x 16.7 cm
Pages: 216
Language: EN
Year: 2023
ISBN: 978-961-7173-31-4
Published by: Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana
Represented by: Marcela Okretič
Promotion and distribution: Sonja Grdina
Ljubljana, August 2023 | © Aksioma, the authors
In the framework of konS ≡ Platform for Contemporary Investigative Art
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konS is a project chosen on the public call for the selection of the operations “Network of Investigative Art and Culture Centres”. The investment is co-financed by the Republic of Slovenia and by the European Regional Development Fund of the European Union.