Digital Art – Nye Thompson – The Seeker

February 19, 2018

This weekend I visited the Victoria and Albert museum. The V&A was paid for from the profits of the Great Exhibition of 1851. That exhibition showcased the latest developments in industry and art.

So it seems fitting that the V&A should host a series of digital design drop-ins.

Drop-in and meet digital artists and designers who explore intersections of art, design, craft and technology

This month was the turn of Nye Thompson and her latest project, “The Seeker“.

Nye been studying and collating AI enhanced CCTV footage with the help of a search-bot .The bot looks for unprotected security cameras and captures their output. The still images are analysed and the bot determines what is contained within. Nye commented on the biases in the machine and how it seems to detect worship in many of the images. Once the machine has found a topic it often looks for related images such as railings being interpreted as the Parthenon and then found other items such as a shrine and temple.

There is no human agency involved, only an emergent system acting on algorithmic ‘instinct’

For more information and a video of the seeker in action see Nye’s website.

The next digital drop-in is on Saturday, 24 March 2018 and will feature Daksha Patel who generates images from bio-sensors.

By Andy from Workshopshed Add Comment

  Posted in: Exhibition Tags: AI, bot, Nye Thompson