Creative reading response:
I think a major difference between computer vision and human vision is the way we process things and how we’re able to process visual information. The computer needs to have recognition ’manually’ set up in order to process the visual data, but humans don’t, we have a built-in innate processor—the brain. Before answering this question, I never really thought about this, because in hindsight, computer vision ‘sees’ things, or else how would there be videos right? Then I realized, no, it doesn’t ‘see’ things, I only assumed so because I see it, but the computer only recorded it as a data, as pixels, it has no concern on the content, in fact, it’s unable to recognize the content unless I define what’s content, which means the specific lighting, color, motions, etc., which again contradicts how we process because this action of ‘defining’ is in of itself restricting and ‘predictory’ already; contents can appear in any light, form, color, and motion. This is quite fascinating to me because this complex machine of a computer can be so precise but still not more precise than our brain, and how I’m able to have vision and recognition without ‘programming’.
Because a computer only recognizes data, we have to manipulate the data it receives and the way it interprets it so that we can display an output that makes it seem like it understood the ‘contents’. That means we need to set up ‘mathematical’ comparisons between the values of pixels and frames, a bigger component of pixels, and specify the kind of values we want to focus on, like a specific color, specific ‘motion’ or a specific brightness. To make it easier for the computer, we can ‘sell-fulfillingly’ manipulate the physical space the camera is placed in to achieve the ‘recognition’ we set up. For instance, if I made the recognition to focus on the difference of brightness, I can make the space all white so that my ‘target object’ can be more easily found because of the intense contrast between the brightness, or I can even make the space ‘illuminated’ so they’re emitting light, which our desired object shouldn’t be able to do, or else there’d be a small slip-up.
This also makes me fascinated in the way surveillance is incorporated into artworks because surveillance/ tracking places a higher demand on the computer since it’s done in ‘secret’ and thus means we can’t manipulate the physical space or the target object but yet surveillance and tracking is still existent, and even used in interactive art. I wonder if that ‘shortcoming’ helps make the art or are they sufficient enough? I don’t know, because intuitively, we always want to have better and more intelligent and upgraded devices, but sometimes artists would purposefully find ‘outdated’ and abandoned things to make their point so I guess my opinion is that while the physicality of devices and equipments affects a lot on the work, it’s not a determining factor to ‘artistic expression’ in the sense that anything less of the best would not make art, which I think is why people like Myron is still able to make something as good as videoplace in a time ‘tech’ wasn’t that prevalent.