How will our quantified lives unfold? transmediale 2015 looks at how we make sense of a culture dependant on measurement and automation procedures, and how to act with autonomy within such a culture. We are living in societies and economies defined by a global competitive drive for constant, algorithm-guided optimisation. While debates rage over government and corporations operating to covertly “collect, process and exploit” all communication flows, are our own roles and responsibilities perhaps being downplayed? What are the underlying motivational structures that propel our hard work and play participation in the networks? transmediale 2015 presents artistic responses and speculative scenarios as well as critical thinking on processes of gamification, quantification, ubiquitous networking and algorithmic control and their ways of making the spheres of everyday life, work and play increasingly indistinguishable.
In a society ruled by algorithms, data is always at play. The drive towards the quantification of everything means that we are all contributing to a state of permanent capture of life into data. As citizens, workers and players of the networks we (often involuntarily) double as sensors for bodies of global data collection, working for the potential extraction of value everywhere and increasing the productivity of everyday life.