Month: November 2022

After the antithesis, I had some further thoughts about the open interpretation value of visual works. During the synthesis, I experiment with the way to present the narration, trying to use a less didactic and even poetic tone to talk about a relatively serious social issue.

In the last studio work, I present the source materials in different forms which have different focuses in the same perspective. While the image shows the visual similarity of the form, the URL links subtitles show where the source of the images is from. The smallest screen demonstrates the process of transforming the stone into online feeds, giving hints to the audience about how the whole things work.

Regarding the experiment of form, I also need to decide which source material I want to go with.

Journey (n.) could be physical and spiritual. a pic to another pic, it is a journey, The transformation is within and after the journey

A beach stone, as an object, was transformed from something and eventually became something else, like sand. Tourists pick the stone they think is pretty or looks like something as the souvenir of a journey. The semiotic perspective was revealed at this moment. People have their own narratives in a single or multiple objects.

By the image of one stone and a few stones into the reverse image search engine, the transformation begins. By seeing a series of visuals, people would have their own narrative in it. To what extent the format would change the perspective toward images?

1. Putting the first pop-up image back into the reverse image search engine to create a visual loop. Use the little flippable prints for people to see the gradient changes of the sequenced images.

2. Using the same image with different prompts in the google reverse image search engine to generate a visual loop. Here the prompts could have different definitions for the engines.

3. Keeping the method of 2. but putting the personal story into it. Divided words from the paragraph, together with the initial image generate a bunch of results.

This week I tried to research and employed the idea of censorship and cyber geopolitics into the experience. By putting the same image into different reverse image search engines, again and again, create a visual loop. And the results would be quite different depending on which engine.

I use the IP address of different images to create a map, trying to reveal the censorship base on the location. But after the experiment, I found out that the IP address of the website doesn’t hence to where it belongs. The location information of these processes includes where the companies are from, where the data are stored, and where the images are taken. The gradient transform of the visual loops also gives another layer of the message. Together, the whole comprehension becomes difficult to get.

Instead of digging too much about the topic itself, I was giving feedback by keeping the simple fact of it and playing with the form of creative output.

Following the thoughts after the dialogue with the artist, I started to investigate more about the search engine, internet and the unconsciously forced decision. Set the context into 3 parts: 1. Reverse image search VS Image search. 2. Visual literacy. 3. Internet geopolitics.

For the first topic, after investigating the basic theory of reverse image search engines, I made 9 similarly identical images. With the altered text in the right corner of the images, and put them on different platforms from China and the Western world. The text can be sequenced as a sentence, at that point, the expectation of this test is to get different results by using different reverse image search engines that would form varied sentences.

The results didn’t match the expectation, which lead to further research about how the engines work. Different engines have different algorithms which are classified and full of manipulation.

If using one’s portrait to put into the reverse image search, what the results will be? To determine a person accurately is highly related to the exposure, which hence to if that person is “famous” or not – the click-through rate of the webpage that includes that person. More clicks, more data storage.

It’s like playing chess or hide and seek with the algorithm. How individuals situate or vanish themselves in the cyber world.

The second part was I henced the visual literacy of human and machine reading images. How does an engine getting smarter? There is a google crowdsource game for people to play with, the aim for it is to help the algorhithm get smarter. The image resource they got was from flickr. People usually negelect the agreement details while they sign up an account on the website which leads to information leaking.

For the third part, from my shallow understanding, it is the policy instrument to take over the online discourse and governance through leading technology dominance between countries.

– How does it create barriers between varied internet ecosystems?

– How does it affect the searching results?

– How does it affect the communication of individuals?