Works Made in Collaboration With Google’s Computer Vision Software
As the expanding web of information technology penetrates deeper into our lives, we can find it difficult to find distinction between the two. These technologies, intended for communication, have come to fulfill a number of purposes and in that have become particularly personalized and intensely commodified. The advent of machine learning means that computers have become better and better at observing behavior to make judgments and evaluations. By observing these patterns they decide who will be most susceptible to particular types of information. Since they already know what you are interested in, by the information they glean from you, the information they return is strikingly similar to what you are interested in. To an unfocused eye it would appear the automated information technology reflects your identity back to you. I postulate though that it is a warped perception, because the information is not fed back passively, the processes that return information do so with a bias, you are seeing yourself cataloged. By digesting this as a reflection of oneself it begins to affect our self perception and then in response our expression of self, shifting it toward that biased position, even ever so slightly. By repeating this process recursively our perception starts to become radically shifted, a hyperbolised version of ourselves, pushed to the outer limits of who we once were.
In this work I wished to show the way that one can allow themself to be taken over, piloted by a complex algorithm. I employed the materials of one of the largest information technology companies, google, to observe my life and surroundings. Much like an artist would watch his subject before painting them, the software took in the environment and used its experience to decide on a composition that was most eye-catching and expressive of the content. It was then my portion of the collaboration the required my hand as an artist to merge the machine’s understanding of the information with my own, as well as my understanding of the machine’s understanding. The result is work that is aimless while confrontational, ideology is galvanized under the pressure of the printing process then melted away with the stroke of a brush. Color isolates itself in each illuminated pixel, distinguished from its neighbor by a barrier of pitch black. One is drawn in to see the distinct swathes but can’t help but step back to try and see the whole picture. And we can't help but feel the cold creep of technology all around us.
Two Girls Ponder a New Spring
Ink and Oil on paper
65”x 36”
Painting Knee Deep In It
Ink and Oil on Paper
36” x 65”
Waves Crash over Rocks
Ink and Oil on Paper
36” x 65”