DADABOT: An Introduction to Machinic Creolization

Essay about the hybridization of cultural forms (music, visual arts, literature) produced by digital technologies. The notion of creolization, proposed by linguists, anthropologists and writers, correspond to the hybridization of cultural elements which lead to original forms. The increasing use of digital technologies in everyday culture (video games, electronic music, new media art, literature, visual art) add a new layer of complexity. Machines indeed play a specific role in this sort of hybridization, as attested by the use of samples, presets, sound effects in electronic music, generative art and glitches in visual arts, or the importance of Web mash-up and humoristic Twitter bots. DADABOT focuses on this “algorithmic turn” in contemporary culture and describe it through several components: interviews with artists, experiments with digital technologies, a lexicons and an essay that address the implications of such changes.