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Arts & Communication Computer vision in tactical AI art

hybrid forms of esthetic or critical interventions into the by Jonathan Roberge and Michael Castelle, and Critical
neoliberal condition’s technical, political, economic, and AI: A Field in Formation, edited by Rita Raley and Jennifer
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cultural layers. Alternative names for tactical media art are Rhee. Authors who explore AI art practices include Joanna
digital activism, critical media, critical hacking, hacktivism, Żylińska, Martin Zeilinger, and Dejan Grba. 2,7,21-23 While
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and culture jamming, although these terms sometimes also Żylińska, Zeilinger, and Grba address tactical artworks,
refer to specific genres. For a concise introduction to the their studies are not specifically about the critical practices
field of tactical media, see Raley. 6 centered around computer vision (CV), which figures
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prominently in contemporary culture. Żylińska identifies
Largely following tactical media art’s theoretical
principles and methodologies, artists who work with AI the post-conceptual artistic treatments of the ultimate
loss of meaning in the hyper-pragmatic development and
combine appropriation, revelation, provocation, and humor application realms of machine vision systems and the
in approaching AI systems’ operative modes or objectives. practices with delegated labor that underscore the issues
Successful works usually refrain from grandiose objectives, of AI’s artificiality. Zeilinger focuses on artworks that
overt representation, and over-explanation in favor of simultaneously appropriate and oppose AI’s capability of
subtle or sometimes intentionally ambivalent critique to let hacking agency, creativity, and ownership to challenge the
the audience actively learn about the controversial views integrity of these notions that underlie legal prescriptions
and interests behind certain AI technologies and identify about intellectual property and artistic uses of technology.
the animosities, struggles, inequalities, or injustices in
their application frameworks. They emphasize presence, This paper complements their scopes by elaborating the
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engagement, and response but occasionally constrain them critical perspective introduced in specific studies by Grba
to raise the awareness of limited actionability or immediate to examine a diverse field of AI art’s tactical engagement
political impact. Notwithstanding their creative scenarios, with the notions and protocols of CV. After providing the
tactical AI artworks are distinguished by their critically contextual overview of CV in computational art, it explores
motivated intents and attitudes. 7 the poetic features of artworks that utilize CV in different
conceptual, technical, and presentational arrangements to
Their topical range includes the sociopolitical question AI’s influence on social, economic, and political
issues of applied AI, such as inductive biases and relations. The focus is on works produced in the past two
prejudices or exerted inequities and injustices, the AI decades when the coupling of statistical ML with CV
industry’s exploitative practices, such as the aggregation technologies has empowered the pervasive surveillance
of transnational labor for training and testing ML culture to penetrate more offline and online layers of
models, the systematic concealment of the extent, everyday life. They are reviewed in four interlinked subject
value, and implications of human creative endeavor in areas of the central section: sociotechnical issues, control
AI development, and workforce conditioning through and conditioning, biometric classification, and ethical and
manipulative interfaces, complacency, lack of protection, epistemic limits. Topographic mapping of the CV-related
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or precarity. The poetic values and social impact of tactical tactical art requires a separate full-volume study, so this
AI artworks are proportional to the breadth and depth four-section lineup highlights the creative approaches to
of their creators’ understanding of the sociopolitical, CV that represent tactical AI art’s most salient directives.
economic, and moral nuances dispersed across the The closing discussion identifies several problems that affect
abstract, technically convoluted, and functionally opaque tactical art’s impact on modern AI and outlines potential
realities of AI technologies and their applications. This routes for tackling the challenges and advancing the field’s
proportionality makes tactical AI art conducive to conceptual cogency, critical strength, and social value.
studying how AI simultaneously reflects and influences
contemporary relations, economies, and worldviews. Placing the successes and challenges of CV-related
tactical practices within a broader context defined by
A diverse body of critical AI studies is useful for
exploring this field. Scientists who investigate AI issues 1 CV is the research area of computer science that seeks
relevant to tactical AI art include Cathy O’Neil, Gary solutions for object and feature detection and classification,
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Marcus and Ernest Davis, Melanie Mitchell, Erik Larson, facial and gesture recognition, scene segmentation, motion
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Matteo Pasquinelli, Michael Kearns and Aaron Roth, tracking, and other forms of image-based automation and
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human-computer interaction.
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and Brian Christian. Writers in the humanities’ critical 2 All discussed works are listed in the reference list and
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AI studies include Kate Crawford, Simone Natale, well documented online, so their descriptions have been
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Vladan Joler and Matteo Pasquinelli, and various authors compacted to the topically most pertinent aspects. Details of
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contributing to the book The Cultural Life of Machine additional (mentioned but not discussed) exemplars can be
Learning: An Incursion into Critical AI Studies, edited found online by querying artists’ names and work titles.
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Volume 2 Issue 3 (2024) 2 doi: 10.36922/ac.2282