Without a blink: Machine ways of seeing in contemporary visual culture

Abstract

In the last decade following the technological and commercial advances in digital image production and in artificial intelligence, human vision-centred understanding of visuality has changed profoundly. Machine vision technologies (MVTs) are used across a wide spectrum of activities ranging from surveillance to medical diagnosis, to adaptive visual filters on social media. This commentary calls for a rethinking of visuality that takes both technological advances and lessons learned from cultural studies into consideration.