Vision Processor: EN471
Florian van Zandwijk
Since the emergence of the yellow vests movement in France on November 17, 2018, the yellow vest has rapidly transformed from a signifier of authority and safety to the symbol of a grassroots movement for economic justice. Vision Processor: EN471 uses a video-dataset which illustrates three archetypal physical behaviours of people wearing yellow vests. A machine learning algorithm trained with this dataset tries to classify existing footage of these roles within their existing context and meaning, which can easily be understood by humans. Although computer vision is easily able to classify a human being, will it ever be able to classify its intentions? This work asks whether a computer vision algorithm will ever be capable of distilling context out of data.
Classification
Scrolling timeline of real footage from protestors, traffic controllers, construction workers and everything in between. The small video’s are placed left of the screen and the algorithm classifies each video with certain percentages for the protestors, traffic controllers, construction workers. This is shown next to the video’s through yellow bars with percentages on a black background. In the right top corner a text reads Vision Processor in white with EN471 in yellow.
About the artist
Our human and technological sensorial perceptions are inseparably connected and constantly shaping each other in today’s digital age; this fact usually serves as the basis for Van Zandwijk’s projects. With installations, a simple intervention or through written or visual essays, Van Zandwijk researches topics from his own perception and hypothesis about present human and non-human Ways of Seeing. In this way van Zandwijk tries to provide insight into and make a statement about contemporary themes involving the biases and limited capacities of human and technological perception.