The Limits of Algorithmic Perception: technological Umwelt

What we see when we look at digital images is the result of underlying algorithmic processes, which are mostly hidden from view. While algorithms for image generation and processing contribute to a culture of mass-visualization, some aspects are obscured in the process. Automating visual tasks introduces an element of the unseen into the act of seeing. This paper takes a hybrid-ecological perspective on the integration of algorithms into modes of representation. Reframing visual technologies in terms of a technological notion of "umwelt", it also considers how the parameters of human perception relate to those of the technologies used to augment boundaries between the visible and the invisible.