Reading this made me think about how differently computers and humans actually process vision. When I look at a painting I immediately read context, emotion, and narrative without even thinking about it. A computer just sees raw pixel data and well, to me that’s like doing pure formal description with zero interpretation, listing visual elements without ever asking what they mean. I also had no idea how much the physical environment matters. I always assumed it was mostly about the software but things like backlighting, infrared lighting, and high contrast surfaces can make or break whether an algorithm even works. It’s almost like you’re setting up the scene for a machine to read rather than a person. The surveillance aspect makes me both uncomfortable and kind of fascinated honestly. The fact that this technology came out of military and law enforcement doesn’t just go away because it’s in a gallery. I think that’s why I find something like Rokeby’s Sorting Daemon so much more compelling than installations that just use body tracking to make something pretty because it actually wrestles with that baggage. When I know something is tracking me I feel it, and I think that feeling is worth exploring more than something with purely just a cool visual. The work that sits in that discomfort feels a lot more honest to me.