Hidrazone - Digital Arts Reviews & News

Fabrica

3rd October to 29th November 2009

Tina Gonsalves’ Chameleon project has been a few years in the making with this exhibition being the second show in Brighton, the previous being a kind of workshop/process talk and exhibit at the Lighthouse. The structure of the piece incorporates some significant computer vision software developed at MIT – essentially a camera records the face of the observer, the software interprets emotional state and plays back sequence from pre-recorded database of actors expressing joy, sadness etc. As an installation, this worked well with the large scale back-projection creating a powerful sculptural presence in Fabrica (a de-commissioned church) and suggested that the project had moved on considerably since it’s previous outing. The project, which received support from a number of agencies, seems to sell itself on the art + science ticket which like many of these projects tends to end up being something that is both questionable art and bad science. I was left feeling impressed by the stature of material that went in though underwhelmed by the output – examples being the inorganic jumps between the emotional states of the performers – a dynamic 3D model would help create a fluid sense of responsiveness. This is probably something that the boffins at MIT would be very pleased with for, as explanatory PR for recognition software it is extremely effective though as an art piece it is unconvincing – perhaps next time.

Workshop presented at FILE 09 – 30th July 2009

Lev Manovich took to the stage at this years FILE to talk through some of the ideas behind the “Cultural Analytics” project – describing a field of study that takes some of the tools and approaches of scientific study and applying it to media art. The thrust of his presentation revolved around the idea that the analytic tools used in the study of film and art history are locked into the conceptual space of the 20th century and are by their nature nature limiting. Taking as case study material for the session Manovich examines the history of 20th century painting, Vertov’s Man With A Movie Camera as well as contemporary motion graphics. By deregarding any reference to meaning and semiotics, focus is drawn to the material aspects of the work such that in the context of painting the examination is of the density of the image expressed in terms of contrast and saturation rather than compositional elements. In this workshop presentation, the audience were invited to experiment with the open source program ImageJ – what appears to a highly functional facility to analyse the image.

Software Studies

Perhaps this goes some way to moving on from the inherent atomisation of meaning; by focusing on the material elements of still and moving image production and using software facility for carrying out a wide range of analytic models in almost real time without the need for specialist supercomputing allows a level of comparison that could not be envisaged a short time ago. There appears to be a certain level of reinvention here – a quick reference to the earlier parts of the 20th century finds the Gestalt school engaging in similar analysis although without the rigour of technological tools – represented in the seminal text – The Visual Story by Bruce Block.