Anti-discovery.
On the algorithm's confidence problem
This issue came from watching something the platform had been observing for three years: the growing certainty of algorithmic recommendation. Not the recommendations themselves, which are often reasonable — but the tone. The confidence. The way a system presents a five-work playlist as if it knows what you need.
Felix Vermehr wrote from a position of sustained scepticism about taste-as-product. Not a rejection of recommendation as a form — this is, after all, what we do — but a refusal of the idea that it can be automated without loss. What gets lost, in his argument, is refusal: the right not to see the next thing, the resistance that makes taste possible.
The issue ran deliberately short. Two dispatches, one pathway. The withholding was part of the argument.
- 01 The anti-discovery route forthcoming Felix Vermehr · Critic, BerlinPathway
- 02 One region, in anti-discovery forthcoming Felix Vermehr · Field noteRegion
- 03 Anti-discovery, in passing Felix Vermehr · From the editorDispatch
- 04 A slow re-read on Recommendation, refusal The room · Group readingReading room
- 05 taste · thread The Editors · CartographyField map
- Recommendation
- refusal
- taste
Cites
- Pathway The architecture of longing — refusal as the other side of discovery 8 steps · ~13 hrs
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The archive is long. Four contemporary rooms.