Technological Power in the Aesthetic Order: Algorithmic Agency and Co-Creation in Contemporary

Abstract

This paper examines how contemporary art operates under the algorithmic logic of technological power, where artists and audiences negotiate freedom within systemic constraints. Through a historical-theoretical framework spanning modern, postmodern, and algorithmic aesthetics, it argues that artistic creation has never been absolutely free but continuously redefined by material, linguistic, and digital “rules of the game.” Case studies including Refik Anadol’s Unsupervised (MoMA, 2022), Rosa Menkman’s The Glitch Moment(um) (2011), Janet Cardiff’s Audio Walks, and Netflix’s Bandersnatch (2018) reveal distinct modes of collaboration, reflection, and constrained agency between humans and machines. The discussion extends to Vietnamese practices such as Nguyễn Trinh Thi’s Vietnam the Movie (2016) and Lương Huệ Trinh’s Soundscape Hanoi (2014), highlighting local negotiations with technological infrastructures. The paper concludes that freedom in art today is not the absence of control but the capacity to act and create within the algorithmic boundaries that technology imposes.