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- Volume 9, Issue 2, 2018
Philosophy of Photography - Volume 9, Issue 2, 2018
Volume 9, Issue 2, 2018
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A portrait of facial recognition: Tracing a history of a statistical way of seeing
More LessAutomated facial recognition methods have become widely used as a way to ascertain the identity of individuals. Yet the methods by which facial recognition technologies (FRT) operate – the machinic performance of the perception of the human face – are often invisible to those under their gaze. This article investigates the machinic perception of the face through an FRT method known as eigenface, in order to both reveal and problematize the ways of seeing that underlie it. As part of its algorithmic processes, eigenface produces an image. This image can be understood as a portrait of machine recognition, making visible the processes through which the algorithm performs recognition and ‘sees’ the human face. The eigenface portrait reveals a way of seeing that is based on statistical processes of pattern recognition. An analogue antecedent of this application of statistics to the recognition of facial images can be found in the composite portrait. Through a dialectical discussion of composite portraiture in multiple disciplinary fields ranging from sociology to philosophy and the visual arts, this article experiments with providing a cultural and social translation of machine processes of visual perception. The discussion shifts the focus of enquiry towards the aesthetics of the algorithmic process in order to provide an entry point for critique and a possible reimagination on algorithmic knowledge production.
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Chroma key dreams: Algorithmic visibility, fleshy images and scenes of recognition
More LessThe increasing pervasiveness of datafication across social life is significantly challenging the scope and meanings of visibility. How do new modes of data capture compel us to rethink the notion of visibility, no longer understood as an ocular-based perceptual field, but as a multifaceted site of power? Focusing in particular on technologies of algorithmic recognition, the article argues that in order to understand the broad stakes of visibility under algorithmic life, the intersection between algorithmic recognition and the notion of social recognizability needs to be further theorized. In dialogue with the work of Sondra Perry, and drawing on contributions from feminist and critical race theories, the article revisits theoretical debates on racialized visibility within photography and film to show how racializing processes are inscribed in digital and algorithmic technologies. In reading through these debates, the article suggests that visibility, as a racial formation, is always already subjected to an algorithmic logic. Through the analysis of Sondra Perry’s work, the article sketches out a political ontology of the image premised on the intersection between computation and the markings of the flesh as a possible way to think through the stakes of visibility under algorithmic life.
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‘Biospace’: The visual rhetoric of space in micrographs
More LessMicroscopy can depict small biological entities that are invisible to the naked eye – cells, neurons, chromosomes, molecules, etc. Microbiology thereby grants us visual access to dimensions of our bodily interior that are otherwise imperceptible to us. Often, in micrographs, this infinitesimal inner realm is made to resemble the way cosmic space is represented in astronomical pictures – an ‘aesthetic leap’ that ties the microcosm of the body to the macrocosm of the universe. This article explores how aesthetic conventions in microbiological images create meaning that transcends their empirical content, and examines the historical precedents of these conventions in the history of anatomy and their contemporary cultural implications.
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The precision of sensibility: How to deal with epistemological uncertainty?
More LessUncertainty is a core issue and – as I would like to argue in this article – also a generative core quality of anthropological sensory practices. Research in particular and epistemologically meaningful endeavours in general are probably not even possible if moments and aspects of uncertainty are excluded or even avoided. Therefore, this article will start in the section ‘The sensory corpus’ with one example of auditory and sensory uncertainty by US-sound artist Maryanne Amacher. This example, the piece ‘Dense Boogie I’, operates directly in the body, in the physical ear of the listeners, and can prove how the listening subject’s idiosyncratic sensibility can be a crucial instrument to proceed in researching and understanding.
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Emerging technologies and anticipatory images: Uncertain ways of knowing with automated and connected mobilities
Authors: Sarah Pink, Vaike Fors and Thomas LindgrenIn this article we outline two different ways of ‘seeing’ autonomous driving (AD) cars. The first corresponds with the technological innovation narrative, published in online industry, policy, business and other news contexts, that pitches AD cars as the solution to societal problems, and urges users to trust and accept them so that such benefits can be accrued. The second is a narrative of everyday improvisation, which was visualized through our video ethnography and participant mapping exercises. Our research, undertaken in Sweden, involved possible future everyday users of AD cars. We argue for a research and intervention agenda that examines how the visual narration of how AD cars might participate in human futures, could be shifted to create new modes of trust and reassurance for publics.
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Reviews
Authors: Iain Campbell, Sara Oscar and Malin WahlbergAgainst the Anthropocene: Visual Culture and Environment Today, T. J. Demos (2017) Berlin: Sternberg Press, 132 pp., ISBN 978-3-95679-210-6, p/bk, £18.00
Becoming a camera
Nonhuman Photography, Joanna Zylinska (2017) Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 272 pp., ISBN 978-0-26203-702-0, h/bk, £35.00
Beyond the Witness: Holocaust Representation and the Testimony of Images, Three Films by Ya el Hersonski, Harun Fa rocki and Eyal Siva n Rebecka Katz Thor (2018) Stockholm: Art and Theory Publishing, 183 pp., ISBN 978-9-18803-161-7, h/bk, £25
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