All Clear (Transparency)

Feature article on various notions of 'Transparency' as they might be related to art and philosophy.

Paul O'Kane sees through the rhetoric of transparency
Recent claims that transparency – particularly the kind heralded by online technologies – is a panacea for democracy veil the fact that, in terms of power relations, these technologies often function more like the one-way mirrors of interrogation rooms. Perhaps artists ought to look back to the radical repurposing of mainstream culture in the tumultuous 1970s for inspiration as to how to reveal the unseen.

'Can we complacently claim that the will of the people is the rule of the people by the people while we enthusiastically give our time and agency over to commodified wizardry whose complex algorithms keep us "sitting in a room, by ourselves, staring at a chunk of plastic", as a recent Facebook post confessed.'