Nicola Bozzi

This paper builds on the concept of ‘tagging aesthetics’ (Bozzi, 2020b) to discuss new media art projects that combine machine vision and social media to address how different kinds of socio-technical subjects are assembled through AI. The premise outlines how the naturalisation of machine vision involves a range of subjects, juxtaposed along different conflictual lines: ontological (human-machine), biopolitical (classifier-classified), socio-technical (tech worker-data cleaner), political (AI-viewing public). Embracing the ambiguity inherent in the shifting boundaries of these subjects, I analyse works by different new media artists who approach one or more of these juxtapositions by engaging with diverse forms of tagging. The practice of tagging is often discussed through data-driven analyses of hashtags and how related publics can be mapped, but in my framework, tagging can encompass a wider spectrum of techno-social practices of connection (e.g. geotagging, tagging users). I discuss artworks by Kate Crawford and Trevor Paglen, Dries Depoorter and Max Dovey to illustrate how these practices can be leveraged artistically to make visible and even ‘stitch together’ the manifold subjects of machine vision. I explain how those taggings denaturalise processes of socio-technical classification by activating awareness, if not agency, through the sheer proximity they enact. Far from being a tool to map knowledge and essentialised identities, tagging aesthetics are ways to perform the techno-social and shape future cultural encounters with various forms of others. By exploring different approaches to tagging aesthetics – (dis)identification, semi-automated assembly and embodied encounter – this paper illustrates how tagging can be used to culturally negotiate the impact of machine vision in terms of issues such as surveillance and the performance of digital identity.

Social media have  given social movements unprecedented tools for self-representation, however emancipatory identity politics are drowned out by the white noise of neoliberal self-branding practices. In response to this highly-aestheticised, de-politicised environment, we need a cultural re-negotiation of online categorisation. Rather than focusing on networks, this essay frames tagging as an everyday gesture of social media users that participates in the collective performance of identity. I argue this performance gives way to the materialisation of cultural avatars – collective identity figures that lie beyond coherent  representation and can  reinforce reductive social stereotypes or inspire politically critical figurations. Apart from offering a cultural critique of tagging itself, the essay discusses a range of creative approaches to tagging that de-naturalise processes of online categorisation by drawing critical attention towards them.

As opposed to traditional nomads, backpackers, or tourists, digital nomads are defined as Internet-enabled remote workers, who maintain a focus on connectivity and productivity even in leisure. This essay discusses the relationship between Instagram and the digital nomad from a theoretical perspective, proposing a critique of the aesthetics and urban politics that underlie this figure. Inspired by recent theories that combine geopolitical and technological insight with a speculative approach, the article positions the digital nomad as a cultural avatar of contemporary neoliberalism, which celebrates a depoliticized aesthetics of work and helps establish a material geography of globalization through social media. In particular, the essay leverages the concept of tagging (not only intended as the use of hashtags like #digitalnomad, #solotraveller, or #remotework, but also geotagging) as a tool for cultural critique, discussing Instagram as a key site of intersection between the imaginary appeal of the traveling entrepreneur and the material effects of globalized gentrification. The conclusion provocatively suggests that, with the increasing economic and geopolitical influence of digital nomadism, Instagram might become a site of negotiation of the figure’s culture and aesthetics, potentially steering them toward a more radical re-imagination of borders and life beyond work. By offering a cultural critique of the digital nomad, the essay contributes to critical discourse on Instagram as a cultural platform.

This work aims at conceptualizing the dynamics of identity-building in globalized metropolises. I stress the importance of tagging as an infor- mation and communications technology (ICT) practice that informs the production and organization of identity models within and beyond digital environments. Most importantly, I emphasize the stereotypical nature of contemporary identities and the subsequent demand for citizens to play an actively creative role in their construction. I define stereotype as the combination of recognizable elements – imaginary tags – that are shared through the collective imaginary and attached to individuals and places as a way of reducing them to more easily mediated entities.

As many have tried defining the collective subject both me and Silvio are a part of – from the Creative Class to the Cognitariat, via the cultural stereotype of the Hipster – his simple conceptual reworking of “entrepreneur” and “precariat” is particularly fit for the aesthetics of his work, which combines glitch episodes with the self-deprecating irony of memes. The related blog outlines an anatomy of the Entreprecariat by analyzing its most widespread phenomena – the distributed office, for example – and dissecting media objects like memes or ad campaigns.

Ksenia Fedorova’s focus on the embodiment of technology and its tendency to expand our experience is clear since the table of contents: across the four chapters of the book, the author ‘zooms out’ from the face to the body, from individual consciousness to the environment around us. We are thus not talking about a strictly bound body, but a relationally expanded one. Just like the human selves Fedorova writes about, each chapter of the book is then an assemblage of theoretical concepts, personal accounts, commercial gadgets, and media artworks. Tactics of Interfacing is a precious resource for both media art aficionados and those interested in a critical take on the cultural implications of new media, also in their more commercial applications.

Among Twitter’s intentionally limited affordances, hashtags have definitely captured the social imagination the most: not only have they become fundamental to establish networks, they are also the subject of comedy sketches and advertising campaigns. The current banality of the hashtag is, however, precisely the reason why we ought to consider this element more carefully. This is why #identity: Hashtagging Race, Gender, Sexuality and Nation, edited by Abigail De Kosnik and Keith Feldman, is a welcome contribution to social media scholarship.

As an award-winning designer and design theorist, Bill Moggridge has a lot to say about the subject of this book. Nonetheless, he decided to keep the successful formula of his previous Designing Interactions (MIT Press, 2006) and have other people explore the topic. Like his predecessor, Designing Media consists in a long series of interviews with many of the key figures standing behind the most popular of today's media.

Published at a significant socio-historical juncture, Pattern Discrimination is a short collection of critical essays about the renewed urgency of identity politics in the age of big data. The four authors discuss different aspects of how algorithmic cultures facilitate ideological polarisation and replicate existing inequalities in the name of technical efficiency. While highlighting the value of each contribution and suggesting the potential benefits of putting theory in dialogue with practice, this review argues the collection as a whole makes a convincing case against the much discussed "end of theory".

This chapter outlines a cultural critique of the Gangsta as an exemplary figure to investigate the performance of social media identity. The main goal of the chapter is to illustrate some of the implications that social media have on the contemporary dramatization of the criminal, here framed as a collective techno-cultural process at the threshold between social stigma and branding. Despite using the term "Gangsta," my intent is not to "fix" this figure as an identity or a class of people, but rather to identify a broad cultural context that emerges from a glocalized hip-hop imaginary, stemming from gangsta rap and evolving alongside trap and drill. The contribution is not intended as an empirical sociological study, but a critical cultural exploration of convergent media that bring together a glocalized gang culture and everyday social media interactions. In the second section, I outline my theoretical framework by identifying a point of convergence between recent studies of Instagram celebrities and criminological takes on the selective nature of gang identity. I also explore the relationship between the "dissing," a cultural form that is very relevant to the more aggressive sub-genres of rap, and the practice of tagging, a key affordance of social media platforms. In so doing, I frame social media tagging as a form of identity labelling. In light of the theory previously outlined, I explain how tagging is used alternately to enforce social stigma and engage in recursive branding. The final section examines the aforementioned forms of tagging more in detail, in relation to specific media ecologies of YouTube videos that feature compilations of Instagram Stories originally posted by emerging Italian rappers. Although it is aimed at offering an interdisciplinary contribution, this chapter adopts an admittedly media-focused perspective. Rather than producing more evidence about the use of social media by gangs, I comment on existing sociological insight in relation to the affordances and aesthetics of social media ecologies, re-problematizing certain forms of online interaction. By focusing on the commonplace practice of tagging in relation to the figure of the Gangsta, I emphasize how online labelling practices can be more fraught that they appear, emphasizing the need for further critical reflections on the stereotyping potential of social media branding practices.