Algorithmic politics
This is an image of the second itteration of the project “El 27 | The 27th” (originally from 2014) by Eugenio Tisselli, a programmer, writer and researcher. In this piece each time the New York Stock Exchange Composite Index closes with a positive percent variation, a fragment of the 27th article of the Mexican Constitution, written in Spanish, is automatically translated into English.
The piece materialises in a “poetic” way, the devasting processes - from necropolics to necrocapitalism - going on in Eugenio’s homeland. He explains its context in Article 27: Algorithmic politics published on Furtherfield:
Today, the dictatorship of finance prescribes a progressive and quick reduction of the sphere of politics, with the aim of canceling the restrictions that laws and codes used to impose on the flow of capital. And governments have indeed shrunk, turning thus into little more than facilitators of the unstoppable progress of capitalism.
Given enough time, the algorithm will produce a version of Article 27 fully readable in an effective – yet incorrect – English. An automated English that will already have attempted to displace humans brutally, even though they might still be fighting for a territory delimited by language only, and refusing to die. An automated English that will have already eroded a land delimited by language only, rendering it unrecognizable: torn, exploited, almost dead.