Date of Award
2026
Document Type
Dissertation - Restricted Access (SIA Only)
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
Contemporary Art
Abstract
This dissertation examines how contemporary art responds to the affective, ethical, and material resonances of algorithmic cultures. The myth of Orpheus is employed as a structural allegory for desire and absence in relation to technologies, focusing on the techno-affective apparatus of visibility, intimacy, and memory that unfolds through vision, automation and datafication. Through works by Agnieszka Kurant, Meta Office, Lauren McCarthy, Donald Rodney, and Grégory Chatonsky, this study traces a trajectory from digital ghost labor and the ethics of algorithmic care to the regeneration of memory systems.
By arguing that intimacy and memory become computational processes in the data afterlife, the study argues that we create a lifeless presence—a mourning devoid of concrete loss. Through art history, media theory, and philosophical critique, this study argues that contemporary art’s power lies not in deciphering technology but in inhabiting its paradoxes. These artists, by staging tensions between transparency and opacity, automatism and emotion, recover humanity through vulnerability, resistance, and the right to embrace the unknowable.
Recommended Citation
He, Yilin (Piry), "The Algorithmic Glance: Ghost Labor, Intimacy, and the Data Afterlife in Contemporary Art" (2026). MA in Contemporary Art Dissertations. 12.
https://digitalcommons.sia.edu/ma_con_art/12