Olga Goriunova rejects digital abstractions as mirror images of ourselves and reflects on why we concern ourselves with representations that aren’t concerned about us.  

Olga and Kimberly discuss how cultural imagination is shaped by technology; digital subjects as unnatural constructs; the distance between individuals and their digital profiles; banal categorization and subjective truth; how statistics and ML changed the concept of the ideal; the limits of digital subjects; extreme individuation and aspiring to become our digital reflections; how current predictions create future realities; why the ideal digital subject isn’t concerned with you; and thinking critically about what we desire and why. 

Olga Goriunova is a cultural theorist working at the intersection of technology, philosophy, and aesthetics. A Professor of Media Arts at Royal Holloway, University of London, Olga is the author of the critically acclaimed book Ideal Subjects: The Abstract People of AI. 

Additional Resources: 

• Aksioma: Institute for Contemporary Art Book Lecture  
• Olga Goriunova Academic Profile  

A transcript of this episode is here.