Sensing Algo-Tectonics

With prediction markets, almost anything can now be priced, traded or bet on. A new type of financial instrument has turned elections, conflicts and climate events into odds of financial return. Sensing Algo-Tectonics takes the financialisation of arbitrary futures as its starting point by developing tools for tracking and visualising "algorithmic tectonics": the movements, pressures and shifts that ranking algorithms deploy across personalised feeds, often too slowly and too diffusely to be perceived in real-time. Through scraping, mapping and data visualisation, we can attend to the minor frequencies and shifts of algorithmic flows. This allows algorithmic performance to become a new venture for financial speculation.

Work in progress. The project is supported by the Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie.