unthinking
photography

Philipp Schmitt's 'Declassifier' uses a computer vision algorithm trained on COCO, an image dataset developed by Microsoft in 2014. In the work, photographs from Schmitt’s series 'Tunnel Vision' are tested and overlaid with the images used to generate the algorithm in the first place. By doing so, Schmitt exposes the myth of magically intelligent machines; the visual data by which machine learning algorithms learn to make predictions is hardly ever shown, let alone credited. Part of the 'Data / Set / Match' programme.

When a computer vision algorithm recognises something in a picture, it soberly frames what it ‘sees’ in confetti-coloured rectangles, digital hues that contrast with the everyday shapes and colours that we see in a space with plain eye. Each neatly labelled with a single category, these annotations highlight answers but don't give explanations. To the uninitiated, it seems almost magical, or at least akin with some sort of intelligence.

"The idea that an architectural rendering can be ‘real’ or ‘fake’ involves a transference of the logic of one medium—building—to the logic of another—drawing. Architectural rendering has always exploited the potentials of the page or canvas where money, knowledge, taste or gravity proved prohibitive..."

The artist and designer Tobias Revell has been invited by The Photographers' Gallery digital programme to curate a strand for Unthinking Photography on the theme of photography, rendering and CGI and their effect in architecture and the built environment. In this text the curator of the series introduces the topic through a short history of image manipulation and the emergence of CGI technologies.

A 3D model depicting a hooded prisoner from Abu Ghraib, was the starting point for a discussion between the artist Alan Warburton and the art historian and curator Julian Stallabrass.