When I was reading ‘Computer Vision for Artists and Designers’, one thing that stood out to me was how computer vision is so different from human vision. For us, seeing feels natural , we can look at a scene and instantly recognize people, objects, emotions, or even context. But computers don’t “see” that way. For them, an image is just a bunch of pixels with numbers. They need step-by-step methods to figure out what’s moving, what belongs in the background, or what part of the picture matters.
The reading showed me some basic techniques that help computers track what we want. For example, frame differencing looks at what’s changed from one frame to the next, background subtraction compares the scene to a saved “empty” version to spot people, and brightness thresholding picks out objects based on how light or dark they are compared to the background. These sound simple, but they can be powerful if the physical setup is right like having strong contrast or good lighting. I liked how the article talks about the environment matters just as much as the code.
Thinking about how this connects to interactive art, I can see both exciting and uneasy sides. On one hand, artists can use tracking to make playful or immersive experiences, like games that respond to your body or installations that react to your movements. That feels fun, creative, and even magical. But at the same time, the same tracking tools can be used for surveillance, like watching people without their consent or profiling them. That tension makes interactive art more thought-provoking, because it forces us to see how technology can be both empowering and controlling.
For me, this makes computer vision in art feel very alive , it’s not just about coding tricks, but about what message the artist is trying to send and how it makes us reflect on being “seen” by machines.