Megan Hyska, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Northwestern University
Friday May 1st, 2:00pm in the Knight Library Browsing Room
We are living through a strange moment for the political use of recording technologies. On the one hand, recording associated with US migra-watch projects (public counter-surveillance of immigration enforcement activity) has been a particularly popular and urgent part of community defense in the second Trump administration. On the other hand, the increasing ubiquity of synthetic media (like deepfakes) that are difficult to distinguish from photos, videos, and audio recordings suggests that the role of even truthful recordings is in flux. This talk addresses what synthetic media mean for projects of surveillance-from-below and what the political relevance of these projects reveals about the capacity of synthetic media to revise the reception of recordings in political life.