Mirror, mirror. . . disco ball? On dancing with algorithmic doubles-goers

Abstract

Algorithmic media proliferates. Alongside such proliferation, the familiar doubles of pre-digital daily life – the specters, phantoms, and apparitions found in folklore, novels, film, and music – are maturing into new kinds of fluid and apparently agentic Others. Such Others – data-driven doppelgangers, literally “double-goers” – increasingly co-constitute their primaries across space and time, entangling erstwhile human users into a more-than-human assemblage. Yet such an assemblage is contentious: the promise of double-goers is mired in surveillance capitalism. Despite being so mired, double-goers emerge as aspirational co-inheritors of yesterday’s tomorrows. As such, they are part of the affective conditions into which we – artists formerly known as human – are now thrown. We are tasked with learning to live with our double-goers. By reassembling the doppelganger in relation to algorithmic media, we provide foundations for a playful choreography: a dance with the new double-goer that moves beyond critical and affective revulsion.