Sabeen Chaudhry

Research project: Anthropocenic Love as Computational Baroque

Abstract

What is the state of love now? Do we ever really connect? What do Tinder, ‘ghosting' and the chaos of TikTok have to do with it? This project interrogates the manner in which computational media construct, subvert and constitute a fundamental aspect of contemporary romantic sociality. I formulate a pragmatic concept of love as process of inter- and intra- connection between so-called ‘individuals', but also the media that form an inseparable part of the couple-‘assemblage'; taking into account contested concepts such as ‘post-human', ‘cyborg', ‘post-internet', ‘URL' versus ‘IRL' and so on. Using this notion of love, I investigate the ontological implications of algorithmic processes with regards to dating and more broadly, romantic sociality in general. Along the way, I consider the role of computational media in connecting and transfiguring the personal, the political and the aesthetic. In framing love as necessarily connective from the outset, I answer the age old philosophical question of whether we can truly and profoundly connect with the romantic ‘other'; ultimately shifting the consideration to a more urgent and generative albeit open-ended account of Anthropocenic love as on-going affective problematisation of connectivity that can be discursively charactered by three key features: convolution, granularity and abstraction – all of which are intimately associated with computational media and constitute a complexification of love. At a time when algorithms not only purportedly ‘read' our emotional states but directly affect them, I re-cast love as computational baroque.