Algorithms and Performance: An Introduction

Mathematicians use the word performance rigorously. In casual conversation or heated argument, skeptics are loosely admonished to “do the math”; but to comply successfully with such a prompt they must perform the necessary calculations to their precise end. To perform is to solve. This small linguistic detail has large practical implications for a society that now puts such a premium on what it calls the “high-performance algorithm,” which optimally organizes the intake of input and the production of output. Ever more present in contemporary life and increasingly urgent to its conduct, therefore, algorithms, which may be defined simply as small procedures that solve recurrent problems, are performing (or not) in every aspect of networked experience, which increasingly mediates, if not displaces, experience of other kinds. Today performance theorists and performers alike are reckoning with the emergence of the new algorithmic culture both critically and creatively. The editors devote this Consortium Issue of TDR to this work, prefaced by a brief history that begins with the coining of the word algorithm itself.