Link: Decisive Camera. Machine Learning.

Sept. 27, Oct. 29, 2017. Online More info

The Link Art Center presents Decise Camera, a work by Sebastian Schmieg.

The work is a new chapter in a series of works raising questions about photography and machine learning technology. Machine learning can be defined as a subfield of computer science and artificial intelligence, that studies the possibility to give machines the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed. It makes use of algorithms that, based on a set of data, can learn to make predictions, to classify and to make decisions.

The first part of the project, produced for The Photographers' Gallery, was based on the gallery's image archive available online. Visitors were invited to assign all the images to one of four given categories: Problem, Solution, Past and Future. This work moves a step forward asking visitors to take a picture with their own webcam or to upload an existing image.

The system will then classify each image, based on the dataset created in the first part of the project, and it will state to which percentage each photo responds to the categories of Problem, Solution, Past and Future.

We have here a multifaceted experiment that questions the role and value of artificial intelligence, human intervention, the biases embedded in algorithmic systems and the ability of machine learning to confront with complex and abstract concepts.

The author examines the ways networked technologies shape online and offline realities. In particular, his practice reflects on humans as software extensions, and on machine vision as a global infrastructure. His output encompasses videos, websites, books, lecture performances, or online interventions. Previously his work has been exhibited at The Photographers’ Gallery, London; Transmediale, Berlin, Germany; Art Center Nabi, Seoul, South Korea; and Bitforms Gallery, New York, USA. Sebastian Schmieg lives and works in Berlin.

Link Cabinet is a single web page hosting solo shows where artists exhibit a single, site-specific artwork. Conceived as a white and neutral exhibition space with an essential interface, Link Cabinet is a blank space that will be transformed by the works on display. After the show, the projects won't be available on the site anymore. Link Cabinet is a project by Matteo Cremonesifor the Link Art Center.

The Link Center for the Arts of the Information Age (Link Art Center) is a no-profit organization promoting artistic research with new technologies and critical reflections on the core issues of the information age: it organizes exhibitions, events, conferences and workshops, publishes books, forges partnerships with private and institutional partners and networks with similar organizations worldwide.