Research Interests

I am a doctoral candidate in the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto. My research focuses on the historical and political dimensions of media technology used for the governance, subjectivation, and surveillance of select populations. Specifically, my work looks at optical media and their role in shaping human conduct in visual information systems. I am a SSHRC Doctoral Fellow and my forthcoming co-authored book, Prisonhouse of the Circuit: A Media Genealogy, will be published by University of Minnesota Press in 2023.

Optical Media from the Middle Ages to AI: Integrating Humans, Information, and Sight

My dissertation seeks to answer the question if and how do optical media conform human vision to the dominant information system? It is largely concerned with how power and knowledge circulate through and around optical media to produce the subject most conducive to the system. There are two primary arguments in this project, the first is that optical media have been developed in response to the particular demands of certain institutions and organizations. These demands were a result of complex and increasing needs to select, store, transmit, and lately process relevant data into useful information. The second is that optical media establish standards of vision, and by looking through these technologies, humans subject themselves to certain visual norms and expectations, thereby conforming to dominant information systems. Combined, these two arguments indicate that as selection media, optical technologies have developed in such a way to determine how power is distributed by a system.

In this project I explore how visual information systems across historical and sociocultural contexts produce modes of subjectivation through optical technologies that determine what we see, when we see, and how we see. This project focuses on the overlooked interface of biological-technological visual practices that determine and structure how knowledge can be produced. By centring questions of the eye and the technical-biological interface in critical data studies, my research establishes a new theoretical foundation to approach questions of power, information processes, and subjectivity.

Chapter One looks at the emergence of reading glasses in the high Middle Ages and their role in shaping manuscript production as a dominant visual information system. This chapter is complete and has been presented at SLSA (2019), and ICHST (2021). Chapter Two explores the role of stereoscopes and VR headsets in the 19th and 21st century respectively, in educational contexts to examine the role of texture (2D or 3D) in producing hierarchies of knowledge and truth. A version of this chapter was accepted for presentation at CCA (2022). Chapter Three considers the optical rangefinder in the 20th century, and AR helmet mounted displays in the 21st century, used in firing systems to examine how militarized ways of seeing produce a weaponized subject. A majority of this Chapter was presented at RhetCan (2022) and will be completed following a visit to the University of Glasgow Archives in November 2022. My final chapter examines the integration of artificial intelligence and optical media such as the Microsoft HoloLens in labour to uncover their role in co-producing visual information systems of subjectivation for cultures of productivity. Research from this Chapter has been presented at 4S (2021) and at the Ethical Innovation for Artificial Intelligence workshop (2020).

Selected Publications

Books

Packer, J., Nuñez de Villavicencio, P., Monea, A., Oswald, K., Maddalena, K., & Reeves, J. Prisonhouse of the Circuit: A Media Genealogy. University of Minnesota Press (2023).

In this book we investigate key points at which analogue information systems were replaced by digital ones to understand how power, information, and subjects are made to circulate. The monograph includes five case studies that explore ​​military telegraphy and human–machine incorporation, the establishment of national electronic biopolitical governance in World War I, media as the means of extending spatial and temporal policing, automobility as the mechanism uniting mobility and media, and visual augmentation from Middle Ages spectacles to digital heads-up displays.

Book Chapters and Sections

Nuñez de Villavicencio, P. “Colour or Greyscale: A Photographer’s Dilemma.” In Show Theory to Know Theory: Understanding Social Science Concepts through Illustrative Vignettes, edited by Patricia Ballamingie and David Szanto. Ottawa, ON: Showing Theory Press, 2022. https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/showingtheory/chapter/subjectivity/

Journal Articles

Moriarty, D., Núñez de Villavicencio, P., Black, L., Bustos, M., Cai, H., Mehlenbacher, B., and Mehlenbacher, A. “Durable Research, Portable Findings: Rhetorical Methods in Case Study Research.” Technical Communication Quarterly 28, no. 2 (April 3, 2019): 124–36. https://doi.org/10.1080/10572252.2019.1588376.