Algorithm Magic: Simondon and Techno-animism

Drawing on Simondon’s vision of the primitive magical universe - the original harmonious mode of existence of the human in the world - the chapter proposes that a new algorithmic magical and animistic universe is in the making in our contemporary computational world. By framing the immersive experience of computation and its sensibilities, perceptions and affects through Simondon’s magical unity where humans are integral part of a totalizing and harmonious whole, the chapter looks at the black mirrors of our digital screens as the portals into a new magical and animistic reticulation of the human and the nonhuman. This perspective locates the algorithm within a genealogy of the relationship between technology and magic, and reads it as a mysterious form of nonhuman intelligence performing in inscrutable ways. It is the increasing autonomous agency and digital uncertainty of algorithms that engenders a new magical and animistic universe.