The reading for this week was about what computer vision is and how it is integrated into the field of interactive media. First of all, the book mentions Videoplace, the first interactive artwork of Mysron Krueger to incorporate computer vision, which was also one of the first interactive artworks. This fact made me realize that the development of technology can also fuel the expansion of other fields. Also, looking at different examples of the integration of computer vision and art, I was just amazed at how the development of technology can also enable artists more creative and innovative ways to create artwork or projects.
I particularly found Sorting Daemon (2003) by David Rokeby intriguing among the examples. This artwork was made by capturing and extracting people’s images who are on the street and dividing them according to areas of similar color. While I truly found his idea of creating such artwork very innovative, this artwork made me question the captured people’s portrait rights. To me, this looked like a violation of people’s portrait rights, which is the right of people to oppose the publication of his/her portrait, as we can see the faces of captured people very clearly in the artwork. Looking at the massive number of captured portraits in the artwork and the description of the artwork, it seemed like the artist just placed the camera somewhere without people knowing the existence of the camera in that location. Then, I came to wonder where we should draw the line between “artwork” and “crime” when the theme of the artwork involves such surveillance and release of the captured portraits without the allowance of the captured people.
Another insight I had after finishing the reading is how seemingly very difficult thing is not that difficult and it is something that everyone could do if he/she knows the logic. At first, when the author talked about how computer vision is actually not that hard concept, I doubted the author. However, after reading the entire article, I came to realize that the author was right. Every time I passed by the IM lab, I was amazed at the interactive installation with the changing Chinese characters capturing our moves and thought of it as a result of very complicated programming that only experts could make. While I do not know the “real” logic behind the programming of that installation, I realized that maybe this could be the application of one of the elementary computer vision techniques that the book mentions. I guess that the installation is the application of the detection through brightness thresholding or frame differencing method. I am leaning more toward brightness thresholding because it seems like there is an assigned Chinese character for each level of brightness if you look at the installation closer. Likewise, this book made me think that sometimes, seemingly complicated things could be in fact not that complicated.