Vol. 13 No. 1 (2024): Content/Form

The delivery of content has become central to our algorithm-mediated realities – formed by and forming language, identities, behaviour, and action. Content cannot be separated from the forms through which it is rendered. If our attachment to standardised forms and formats – served to us by big tech – limit the space for political possibility and collective action, then this journal issue of APRJA asks what alternatives might be envisioned (including for research itself)? By exploring our relations to content and the forms through which it is made public, it takes an interest in the production and consumption of representation of content, the hyper-realities of content production, our troubled relation to content, the interfaces of content, the machinic production of our visual realities, and the crisis of political imagination that may follow from this – and how this is reflected in aesthetic production, artistic research, and the broad field of software studies and interface criticism. The issue presents the outcome of a research workshop that preceded the 2024 edition of the transmediale festival, in Berlin.