Algorithms, Artificial Intelligence, and Posthuman Adaptation: Adapting as Cultural Technique

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Abstract The paper discusses hybrid writing practices which emerge as a consequence of digital coding in electronic media and therefore also transform the materiality of ‘classic’ media. It argues that practices of adaptation have been re-shaped by digital advances that have not been taken into consideration by adaptation studies. The interconnected digital world holds large quantities of available data and it is conceived as an ever-changing space of permanent copy and constant adaptation. It is marked by fluid, textual recombination (e.g., remix, mashup, intermedia trailer, remediation, remake, and fanfiction). The focus in this essay will be on automated writing practices executed through artificial neural networks or deep-learning applications that algorithmically recognize and imitate writing patterns as further typical manifestations of aesthetic practices in an information-rich society. It assesses these algorithmic writing practices as digital art, in relation to modernist, surrealist, and Dadaist avant-garde experimentation with automated writing. In addition, the essay raises the question of the present role and function of adaptation as a genre, and adaptations as texts, as quite separate from adapting as a human cultural technique (Kulturtechnik) in the context of newly defined modalities and cultural literacies. Advocating a wide notion of adaptation, the contribution launches a definition of posthuman adaptation that applies Actor-Network Theory to adaptation studies.