Salon Digital: Gabriel Pereira
Seeing like algorithmic surveillance
Investment in forms of algorithmic surveillance—from facial recognition in the supermarket to license plate recognition—have skyrocketed over the past decade. The promise is that algorithmic technologies allow for data to be analyzed at an enormous scale, increasing public safety. At the same time, these systems have been questioned for the many problematic outcomes of their (violent) use. Critics have pointed these systems reinforce racism and may lead to increased surveillance of marginalized communities. This lecture asks: How may we use algorithmic surveillance to look at itself? I will explore the colonial rise of surveillance systems, but also the materiality of these systems in our everyday lives—their images, technologies, and infrastructures. Ultimately, this exercise will help to imagine how we could learn to not take algorithmic surveillance at face value. This reflection will take shape as a live video-essay (a talk with short video segments).
Gabriel Pereira is Assistant Professor in AI & Digital Culture at the University of Amsterdam (UvA), based at the Media Studies department and the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC). His main research interest is the critical study of data and algorithms, especially as they intersect with vision/images/surveillance.
He considers organizing an essential element of research work today. He has organized multiple events between practice and research on critical computing, most recently the Con/Crit/Tec residency. He also serves on the board of the Center for Arts, Design and Social Research, as a Secretary of the Association of Internet Researchers, and is part of the Tierra Común network. His research methods are interdisciplinary and collaborative, involving both forms of qualitative research and different forms of practice-based inquiry (e.g. arts-based, interventionist).
For example his short film “Future Movement Future – REJECTED” (together with Bruno Moreschi) is the story of a dystopian surveillance future that was barred by institutional refusal. It importantly reminds us about how total surveillance, the “almighty algorithmic eye,” may end up seeing-predicting much less than imagining-dreaming.
https://ojs.library.queensu.ca/index.php/surveillance-and-society/article/view/15126