How digital technologies affect the way we conceive of the self and
its relation to the world, considered through the lens of media art
practices.
In Tactics of Interfacing, Ksenia Fedorova explores how digital
technologies affect the way we conceive of the self and its relation to
the world. With the advent of ubiquitous computing, the self becomes an
object of technological application, increasingly defined by data
received from tracking technologies. Subtly, these technologies
encourage versions of ourselves that are easier to interpret
computationally. Fedorova views these shifts in self-perception through
the lens of contemporary media art practices, examining a range of
artistic tactics that enable embodied and intimate experiences of
machinic operations on our lives.
At the center of Fedorova's analysis are the mechanisms that structure
the relations between the self and the world at the level of the
interface; she considers "interfacing" a process in which interrelation
happens and different agencies play off against each other. She
discusses such topics as interfaciality and the face as a medium;
self-image and the boundaries of the self, understood through
technological mediation of an embodied experience; the relation between
the self and the other, reshaped by algorithmic technologies; and the
augmentation and alteration of spatial perception.
The artworks Fedorova discusses present scenarios of interfacing that
range from responsive environments to artificial intelligence
conversational agents. She shows that art and aesthetic experience offer
fruitful ways to reflect on the effects of contemporary technological
culture, enabling encounters that shift our perspectives on the
boundaries of the self and challenge the very capacity to feel human.
