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Arts & Communication Computer vision in tactical AI art

in various sociopolitical contexts. For example, Ken
Rinaldo’s Paparazzi Bots (2009) connected human-robot
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interaction with the capricious celebrity criteria in popular
media and artist-superstar myths stoked by the art market
(Figure 4). This work featured autonomous CV-controlled
robots that roamed galleries and art events, picked up
visitors who were smiling, took their snapshots, and
uploaded them on the Internet and to the press services.
By enticing visitors into an intentionally manipulative
interaction (only those who smile get “rewarded” by being
photographed), Paparazzi Bots extends its witty critique
of the manipulative power of visual capture beyond the Figure 3. Carrie Sijia Wang, An Interview with ALEX (2020). Image
art world culture toward the social media business, which courtesy of the artist
had already been heavily developing and applying AI to
manage their services and users.
A conceptual relative to Paparazzi Bots and Random
International’s installation Audience (2008, mentioned
above), Shinseungback Kimyonghun’s Nonfacial Mirror
(2013) elegantly employs an inverse logic of interaction.
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It is a plinth that hosts a motorized bathroom mirror with
a camera concealed behind the glass pane and OpenCV
and Dlib face detection libraries running in the computer
inside the plinth. The mirror persistently rotates away
from the visitor if either one of the libraries detects a
human face in the camera’s view. Like its two predecessors,
Nonfacial Mirror references earlier surveillance artworks,
such as Peter Weibel’s three-channel CCTV installation
Beobachtung der Beobachtung: Unbestimmtheit (Observing
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Observation: Uncertainty, 1973), whose cameras and Figure 4. Ken Rinaldo, Paparazzi Bots (2009). Installation view at the
monitors were arranged to prevent visitors from seeing Cultural Olympiad Digital Edition exhibition curated by Malcolm Levy,
their faces in any position they took inside the setup. 2010 Winter Olympics, Vancouver, Canada. Photograph courtesy of the
Besides highlighting the power of AI-driven surveillance artist
systems to mediate public presence and self-perception,
other works play with the nuances of sociocultural
contextualization and technological conditioning of gaze
by way of CV. For instance, Kenichi Okada and Naoaki
Fujimoto’s Peeping Hole (2010) reinvigorated the well-
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established artistic exploration of eye-tracking techniques
in a charming game of shared visual curiosity and
transgression (Figure 5). As part of a group exhibition, this
installation invites visitors to look through a peeping hole in
one of the gallery walls. When a visitor starts looking at the
beach scene photograph displayed in a chamber behind the
wall (and only while looking), an overhead projector beams
the photograph’s circular area tracking their wandering
focal interest on the wall’s front surface above the peeper,
who remains oblivious of other visitors’ participation in Figure 5. Kenichi Okada and Naoaki Fujimoto, Peeping Hole (2010).
their curiosity. Its friendly betrayal and subjugation of Installation view. Photograph: Kenichi Okada. Courtesy of the artists
viewers’ expectations in consuming art discreetly point
to the wider issues of reliance on and manipulation of the Kyle McDonald and Matt Mets’ Blind Self Portrait
audience’s trust by both the artists and art institutions. (2012) took a different look at the trust-based (voluntary)
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Volume 2 Issue 3 (2024) 6 doi: 10.36922/ac.2282