A Prayer to the Algorithm
We believe in one code
The book Now We See, which this Substack is named after, charts a physical journey from Jerusalem to London looking to find what millions of pilgrims have seen through millennia. Now we stare at our screens searching for the numinous. Here is a prayer to wake you up from eternal scrolling.
The oculus, Pantheon, Rome. 2022, from the book Now We See.
A Prayer to the Algorithm
Oh Server that is in Cloud,
Algorithm is your name.
Your suggestions come,
Your calculations done,
In brain, as in Silicon.
Give us today our daily threads,
and forgive us our ad debts
as we deplatform those
who comment against us.
And lead us not into transgression
(of community guidelines)
but deliver us from ebooks
for yours are the influence,
tech lords and stories.
Now and forever.
A-rithm
Have you contemplated the great mystery of our times? Or have you cursed its control of our lives? This post is about algorithms, the creators of discontent and why Substack offers something sort of old and sort of new.
Blowing up hurts
Unbelievably enough, my Instagram followers could fill a city-sized club football stadium, but these days it feels a lot like the crowds have abandoned the terraces or are watching another game. In the beginning, my first 100 followers were friends, family and work colleagues, photographer heroes or picture editors at National Geographic and The New York Times. I knew them by name. Our peaceful, artistic idyll was about to disappear in an explosion.
I posted a slow-mo video of penguins, made on a day off seeking to rekindle my vision, which boosted me to 4,000 followers. It felt nice, but then I was put on Instagram’s suggested user list, and it all blew up. I remember saying to myself at the very start that if I wasn’t content with 100 followers then 100,000 wouldn’t satisfy me either. At least with 100, I could better gauge the response to a photo by reading what the humans had to say about it, rather than poring over stats graphs about engagement.
Blowing up online, by which I mean being suddenly found by a large, new audience, is a process that, as the term suggests, will cause some damage. Like adding caesium to a basin of water. Awesome for a moment, then glass cracks and liquid floods the floor. At school, they only let us watch this experiment on video, and even then the TV shook.
Hacking your heart
Algorithms are lines of code designed to optimise your experience. They lure human attention, trained by our likes, comments or even just what you linger on for a moment. Then this immaterial, online-present force shows you stuff to keep you hooked on its dopamine drip so the tech giants can harvest your data. The algorithm sees us as metrics not people. This encourages creators to make stuff that feeds the algorithm not the soul. A blind offering to the great unseen code behind the whole show.
Social media platforms hack the fundamental human algorithm – wonder. This was intended to be directed at stars, oceans and loved ones. Joy was the sharing of that wonder.(I call this the worshipful instinct. It was my earliest instinct with a camera, aged seven at Edmonton Zoo. I took a picture of a Racoon, and ran to tell my dad what I had seen )
Now, our wonder hijacked online, we gawp at LED cacti and heated synthetic slippers. And I think we will all agree that hitting a share button brings more passing amusement than deep joy.
Rather than lament all this (apart from in this post!), I moved to Substack because it is primarily relational. I write for people who are curious about the world, who care about stories and artistic experimentation. I write for people who want to support an independent artist and see what I make. They write back. And they get to see new things that feed the worshipful instinct.
Here are some things I have found recently…
BENEFICIAL DISTRACTIONS
El Anatsui / Scottish Mission Book Depot Keta, Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh
Ghanian artist El Anatsui reappropriates discarded materials like bottle tops to create huge woven textiles. Since we dump our recycling on Africa, the artworks are a form of redemption and judgement on our consumption. The title work, named after the Scottish Mission Book Depot in Keta that provided the artist’s first art materials – his books and crayons – looms like the glory cloud found in Byzantine mosaics.
Fragile Beauty: Photographs from the Sir Elton John and David Furnish Collection, V&A South Kensington
When Elton stopped doing drugs he started collecting photographic prints. Decades later, he has amassed a Who’s Who of modern photography and it’s on show at the V&A. I actually saw it on the member’s day back in May, but it has stayed with me, haunting me at times. We see life in all its fullness; the beautiful, the bad and the really ugly. The show is on until January 2025, so you have time.
BOOK OF THE MONTH
Nothing Personal by Nikita Teryoshin, GOST books
Delving into the weird world of arms fairs, Teryoshin has created a photobook about something that you didn’t know existed – or if you did, you didn’t want to see. The photos are strongly composed, to the point and brashly lit, drawing us into the desert runways or hangars around the world where arms fairs are hosted. There is potency and wry humour in the banality of bombs and brochures juxtaposed with mugs of coffee or women in floral dresses. I was left wondering where I fit into this industrial complex and also in awe of the visual storytelling.
ARTIST OF THE MONTH
Lads and lasses, Murphy’s Fair, Hartlepool, July 2019 © Mary Turner
Mary Turner is British documentary photographer who will be celebrated long after she is gone. For now, though, she is very much alive and I want to praise her now so she can hear it! Mary’s work first appeared on my radar with her poetic images of everyday life in the UK. She revealed marginalised working communities in painterly moments, making us see and feel with her subjects. Her stories from Britain’s margins appear regularly in The New York Times. If I was making a show of British photography today, I would put her intimate, humanistic pictures at the heart of it.
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