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Arts & Communication Computer vision in tactical AI art

domains. They do not always follow openly activist agendas
but employ subtle or covert micro-politics of disruption,
intervention, and education. For revelatory purposes,
they occasionally combine humor (irony or sarcasm) with
provocation and take idiosyncratic or ambivalent positions
toward the issues they address. Sometimes, however, their
missed potentials and failures indicate factors that affect
tactical (AI) art’s poetic cogency, social responsibility, and
political impact. Here are some examples.

2.1. Sociotechnical issues
Many concepts, themes, and methodologies of recent
CV-related AI art were introduced by tactical works that
combined repurposed CV technologies with pattern
recognition and natural language processing (NLP) in the
Figure 1. Golan Levin and Greg Baltus, Opto-Isolator (2007). Photograph 2000s and early 2010s. For example, Christian Moeller’s
courtesy of the artists Cheese (2003) is one of the early artworks that used facial
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attribute classification for social critique. Moeller hired six
Audience (2008) and Morgan Rauscher’s installation actresses to hold a smile in front of a video camera for as
Zeugen (2009 – 2010). long as they could (up to 90 min). Their facial expressions
were scrutinized in real-time by an emotion recognition
The primary roles of CV in these works are to system, and whenever their grimace went below a certain
emphasize – through imitation or alienation – the psycho- parametric threshold of “happiness,” an alarm alerted
social aspects of observation and gaze and the datafication of them to show more “sincerity.” The resulting installation
the human body and existence. They also raise the questions comprises video displays documenting each actress’
of spectatorship, the “ownership” of visual experience, the effort together with a vertical graph that transitions
nature of spectacle, and the tensions between passive and from red to green according to her current “sincerity”
active observation. Most of these works include critical level (Figure 2). Cheese expounds the hypocrisies of
overtones about automated surveillance, but their most sociotechnical normalization of individual behavior and
pronounced poetic traits do not necessarily target the presentation. By paying actresses to perform an ultimately
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specific sociotechnical contexts of AI-influenced culture. absurd type of work regardless of their personal appraisal
Modern CV contributes to AI’s impact on the globalized of its artistic purpose, Moeller also nods toward Santiago
infrastructures of industry, commerce, communication, Sierra’s ambivalent critique of labor and power disparities
and entertainment by funneling digital emulations of in performative setups, where participants (often from
cognitively most beneficial human sense (sight) through underprivileged communities) are hired for absurd,
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complex but often flawed ML filters. Tactical AI artworks menial, or abusive physical tasks.
with CV address the practical, political, and ethical Another landmark work, Paolo Cirio and Alessandro
aspects of this confluence, which has allowed corporate Ludovico’s Face to Facebook (2010), revealed the application
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and state sectors to expand in scope and reach new of automated facial recognition in social media by hijacking
levels of sophistication and efficacy in supervision, data and intersecting it with uncertainty and arbitrariness to
collection, biometric profiling, behavioral tracking and make a multifaceted critique of AI-powered platform
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prediction, micro-targeting, and social engineering. capitalism. The artists created software bots that ran pattern
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By creating technical arrangements that imitate, deviate
from, or conflict with human visual perception, tactical AI 5 For a similar, albeit more abstractly formalized sociotechnical
artworks question, criticize, and subvert the roles of CV critique, David Rokeby’s installations Sorting Daemon
and the concept of seeing-as-knowing in these new power (2003) and Gathering (2004) used human figure recognition
mechanisms. They use CV to point out the problematic and and color sorting from a live video feed to express concerns
about the application of automated systems for personal
undesirable application consequences of ML architectures profiling in the war on terror.
and indicate the broader epistemic, existential, and 6 This is the final part of the Hacking Monopolism Trilogy
sociopolitical issues of modern AI. To incite critical (2006 – 2010), including Google Will Eat Itself and
scrutiny, artists modify, repurpose, or recontextualize CV Amazon Noir, realized in 2006 by Cirio, Ludovico, and
technologies outside their established operative modes and ÜBERMORGEN.COM.

Volume 2 Issue 3 (2024) 4 doi: 10.36922/ac.2282