This publication is about Machine Research – research on machines, research with machines, and research as a machine. It thus explores machinic perspectives to suggest a situation where the humanities are put into a critical perspective by machine driven ecologies, ontologies and epistemologies of thinking and acting. It aims to engage research and artistic practice that takes into account the new materialist conditions implied by nonhuman techno-ecologies. These include new ontologies and intelligence such as machine learning, machine reading and listening (Geoff Cox, Sam Skinner & Nathan Jones, Brian House), systems-oriented perspectives to broadcast communication and conflict (John Hill, Dave Young), the ethics and aesthetics of autonomous systems (Maya Indira Ganesh, Maja Bak Herrie), and other post-anthropocentric reconsiderations of materiality and infrastructure (Abelardo Gil-Fournier, Etherbox interview).

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Table of content

Machine ontologies and intelligence
Ways of Machine Seeing: an introduction by Geoff Cox
Machine Listening: WaveNet, media materialism, and rhythmanalysis by Brian House
Absorbing Text: Rereading Speed Reading by Nathan Jones & Sam Skinner

Machinic systems of conflict
Don’t just sit there shouting at the television, get up and change the channel: a networked model of communication in the cultural politics of debt by John Hill
Computing War Narratives: The Hamlet Evaluation System in Vietnam by Dave Young

Machine ethics and aesthetics
Elusive Borders: Virtual Gravity and the Space-Time of Metadata by Maja Bak Herrie
Entanglement: Machine learning and human ethics in driver-less car crashes by Maya Indira Ganesh

Post anthropocentric reconsiderations
Seeding and Seeing. The inner colonisation of land and vision by Abelardo Gil-Fournier
Interview with an Etherbox by various authors

Context

Since 2011, Aarhus University and transmediale have organised research workshops as part of an ongoing collaboration with shifting partner organizations: In/Compatible Research, Universität der Künste (Berlin, 2011); Researching #BWPWAP, Leuphana University of Lüneburg (Lüneburg, 2012); Post-digital Research, Kunsthal Aarhus (Aarhus, 2013); Datafied Research, School of Creative Media, City University Hong Kong (Hong Kong, 2014), EXCESSIVE RESEARCH, Liverpool John Moores University, the Liverpool Biennial (Liverpool 2015), and MACHINE RESEARCH, Constant (Brussels, 2016).

Each of these workshops has resulted in the publication of a peer-reviewed newspaper as an experiment in new forms of scholarly publication, and an open access online academic journal, APRJA (A Peer-reviewed Journal About_).