As Levin noted in the article, there is a wide range of opportunities to utilize computer vision for interactive projects in the real world. On the surface level, human vision and computer vision seem similar, but at their core, the differences between them are striking. Human sight is based on context and shaped by years of experience living life, but computer vision is technically just raw pixel data at the start. Computer vision depends on the compatibility of the image with its abilities. If we give it the image of a person in different lighting or a new angle, it can result in unexpected processing outcomes, even though our human vision can easily identify that it’s the same person.
To help computers track what we’re interested in, I think it comes down to building a contrast between the object we wish to scan and its immediate surroundings. The author mentioned several techniques for doing this, such as frame differencing, which compared changes between video frames, background subtraction, which identified what was new compared to a static scene, and brightness thresholding, which isolated figures using light and dark contrasts. What I found most interesting was the use of difference in movement in the Suicide Box project, where it was the odd vertical motion of the persons that was the contrasting event in the image, and what the computer consequently identified as the target.
That said, computer vision’s capacity for tracking and surveillance makes its use in interactive art complicated. On one hand, it can make artworks feel so much more alive, and on the other, like in the Suicide Box project, it leads to significant controversy and even disbelief that the recordings could be real. It’s also interesting to think that what computer vision did in the Suicide Box project, human vision could never do, at least without causing the observer lifelong trauma. So computer vision does not just enable interactive art, but helps raise questions about privacy and control, and reflects cultural unease with the idea of being watched.
I would also like to add how cool I find it that I’m now learning about these technologies in detail, when as a child I would go to art and science museums to see artworks that would use this technology and leave me feeling like I just witnessed magic; a similar feeling when I got my Xbox One and all the sports games would detect my movement as the characters’.