Course preview

Artificial intelligence (AI) is all around us, transforming the way we see the world and the world see us. Sometimes, we barely notice, sometimes, the results of AI can be very impressive, though sometimes so impressively bad, that Hito Steyrl and others started to talk about “Artificial Stupidity”. But almost always, the actual procedures of AI remain mysterious, locked away in a black box.

In this module, we will look at a recent wave of artistic and theoretical work that tries to open this black box, creating a language and an esthetics for critical engagement. In particular, we will look at image recognition AI, what the artist Trevor Paglen calls “predatory vision” and the data scientists Joy Buolamwini calls the “coded gaze”, referring to gender and racial biases in these systems.

We will also use some web-based image recognition systems to get a first-hand impression of the capacities of these technologies as tools for artistic investigation.

Course logistics

Date: Week 17, April 20-24, 2020

Time: 10:00 - 17:00

The course takes place online:

Connect through the Zoom app, ID: 7890997001

or through a web browser

https://zhdk.zoom.us/j/7890997001

The password is sent to you by email.

Course requirements:

active participation in group activity

active individual work (via pad)

fictional short story, 2-3 pages, to be handed until Sunday, April 26. (Upload to Paul)

Course Materials

Pad: http://pad.vmk.zhdk.ch/p/art_ai_imagerecognition

Monday Morning

Similarity & Difference

!Mediengruppe Bitnik SAME SAME. WATCHING ALGORITHMS - CABARET VOLTAIRE EDITION 2015

Mario Klingemann & Simon Doury X Degrees of Separation, 2018

How Image Recognition works, technically

A friendly introduction to Convolutional Neural Networks and Image Recognition, 2017, 32 Min.

Activation Atlas, 2019

Understanding image models and predictions using an Activation Atlas, Google AI Adventures, 2019, 7:49

Joy Buolamwini The coded gaze

AI, Ain't I A Woman?, 2018, 3:33

https://www.notflawless.ai, see stories there,

http://gendershades.org/overview.html

How I am fighting Bias in Algorithms. TEDx Talk, 2017

Safe Face Pledge

Algorithmic Justice League

Another form of Bias:

!Mediengruppe Bitnik! Dada. State of the Reference, 2017

Further Reading:

Eubanks, Virginia. Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor. First Edition. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 2017.

Noble, Safiya Umoja. Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. New York: New York University Press, 2018

Monday Afternoon

Graham, Mark, Rob Kitchin, Shannon Mattern, and Joe Shaw. How to Run a City like Amazon, and Other Fables, 2019. issu.com, PDF

Select one story, read it. Write short summary in the pad and how the story relates to the actual company, add your name to the entry

short research on image recognition. Select one news story that you fund interesting. Enter the link to the pad and write why you selected this story. Add your name to the entry

Tuesday Morning

Adam Harvey Art projects about privacy, computer vision, and surveillance

Rejecting the automated gaze: Camoflash, 2008-10 CV Dazzle, 2010-2014, https://ahprojects.com/stealth-wear/ Stealth Wear, 2012-13, Hyper Face, 2017-18

Exploring data sets: [MegaPixels: Faces Machine Learning City Interview with Adam Harvey, 2018

Research: The unstoppable Microsoft Celeb (MS-Celeb-1M) Data Set

From 1 to 100 pixels, Adam Harvey, TEDxVilnius, 2017, 18:29

Tero Karras, Samuli Laine, Timo Aila. This Persons doesn't exist

ClearView AI

The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It. NYT, 20.01.2020

I Got My File From Clearview AI, and It Freaked Me Out. 24.03.2020

Clearview AI Lured Rich Investors by Letting Them Rummage Around in Its Creepy Face Recognition App, 05.03.2020

The Far-Right Helped Create The World’s Most Powerful Facial Recognition Technology Huffington Post, 07.04.2020

Afternoon Tuesday

Trevor Paglen

Is Photography Over?, 4 Parts, Fotomuseum Winterthur, 03.2014

Is Photography Over?

Seeing Machines

Scripts

Geographies of Photography

Read these four short parts. Select four sentences that you find interesting and copy them to the pad. Please organize them in the pad according to the section.

Select one news story or artwork and add it to the pad. Write a short note, why this story/Work is interesting.

Wednesday Morning

Trevor Paglen & Cate Crawford

Datafication of Science Lecture at HKW, Jan 12, 2019. 32 Min

|Discussion with Kate Crawford, Trevor Paglen, Felix Stalder HKW, Jan 12, 2019, 14Min

Kate Crawford and Trevor Paglen, AI. The Politics of Images in Machine Learning Training Sets

Fondazoione Prada: Training Humans, Fondazione Prada, Venice, 12 Sep 2019 – 24 Feb 2020 Review, we-make-money-not-art.com, Dec. 16.2019

Paul Eckman: Seven Universal Facial Expressions

Why our facial expressions don’t reflect our feelings, BBC, 10.05.2018

Wednesday Afternoon

Research and select the news story on which you want to base your fictional story. Make a first sketch of your story.

Thursday: all day

Guest. Marco Spitzbart Image recognition projects and hands-on exercises.

Friday Morning

Collection of News Stories and ideas of short stories

Friday Afternoon

Individual writing of short stories

Possibility of individual mentoring.