Automation, Representation, and the Question Concerning the Legibility of the Image/Machine Today

This paper reflects on what the notion of legibility might entail in a machinic world, in which any form of‘ cultural expression necessarily partakes in ever-more complex processes of (mass) mediation. What is and is not (conceived as) legible from a cultural, literary, cinematic, curatorial, historical, material, juridical, computational, affective, human, technological and machinic point of view? What are the new conditions, forms, and technologies of il/legibility in a machinic world? What new ways of reading (and new kinds of readers)are emerging in relation to old and new media, what do they imply about the modes and aims of il/legibility, and what kinds of agency, subjectivation and individuation do they entail, afford or presuppose? In unpacking some of these and related questions concerning the il/legibility of our present-day culture, this paper calls attention to the urgency of asking what makes something legible or illegible to whom (or, indeed, what); what kinds of reading, processing or navigating such il/legibility facilitates or forecloses; and what role film and critical (media) theory, and the humanities at large, can (still) play in tackling these and related issues.