As Synæsthetics refers to any technology, especially technological artworks, that use sensory data collection to influence future outcomes in various forms, the focus of this chapter will begin with an exploration of and history of software aesthetics, which has revolutionized how information is processed and used in multitudinous cross-disciplinary ways.

Data collection and sense-aware electrical components enable creative expression to be shaped by software algorithms, projections, statistics, or differential inputs, driving the complexity of the data into live and recorded outputs. This chapter will examine devices and mechanisms as historical phenomena and critically examine these technologies within the context of surveillance and big data.

The media theorist Luciana Parisi offers a sharp philosophical critique of information, challenging the idea that data is passive, objective, or merely representational.

At the core of Luciana Parisi's theory is the claim that information is active and generative, not just descriptive or neutral.1 As she suggests, digital information does not simply encode reality but participates in ongoing processes of becoming. Algorithms are performative agents that produce new realities by generating patterns, relations, and outcomes that exceed human intention. This shifts information from something we interpret to something that has its own operational logic that unfolds in computational environments.

Contemporary forms of AI deploy probabilistic reasoning, which privileges prediction over explanation. This leads to a mode of knowing that is preemptive and speculative, in which decisions are made based on what is likely rather than on what is true or just.2 In this framework, information is less about meaning and more about calculation and modulation—a continuous processing of signals aimed at optimization. The consequence is a subtle but powerful shift: human reasoning, uncertainty, and interpretation are increasingly displaced by automated forms of inference that operate at scales and speeds beyond human comprehension, raising serious questions about agency, accountability, and the limits of thought and human awareness in an algorithmic age.

Key processes and themes examined will be the relationship between software and art; Cybernetics; AI and its algorithms in art; The Internet of Things; and Behavioural Structures as they pertain to “knowledge” produced within an era of surveillance capitalism.

Key influential theorists for this chapter are:

Sherry Turkle, Luciana Parisi, Friedrich Kittler, Roy Ascott, Norbert Wiener, Sadie Plant, Melanie Mitchell, and Anna Munster.

1. Parisi, Luciana Parisi. Contagious Architecture: Computation, Aesthetics, and Space. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013, 2.

2. This pertains to decision agents and decision-making models