

Computers Watching Movies shows what a computational system sees when it watches the same films that we do. The work illustrates this vision as a series of temporal sketches, where the sketching process is presented in synchronized time with the audio from the original clip. Viewers are provoked to ask how computer vision differs from their own human vision, and what that difference reveals about our culturally-developed ways of looking. Why do we watch what we watch when we watch it? Will a system without our sense of narrative or historical patterns of vision watch the same things?

Computers Watching Movies was computationally produced using software written by the artist. This software uses computer vision algorithms and artificial intelligence routines to give the system some degree of agency, allowing it to decide what it watches and what it does not. Six well-known clips from popular films are used in the work, enabling many viewers to draw upon their own visual memory of a scene when they watch it. The scenes are from the following movies: 2001: A Space Odyssey, American Beauty, Inception, Taxi Driver, The Matrix, and Annie Hall.

2001: A Space Odyssey

American Beauty

Inception

The Matrix

Taxi Driver

Annie Hall

Exhibitions

The major exhibitions of Computers Watching Movies include:

AI More Than Human, Barbican Centre, London, UK

Science of the Unseen: Digital Art Perspectives, SIGGRAPH (online)

Space Sight, Cultural Ctr. of European Space Tech., Vitanje, Slovenia

Systems Under Liberty (solo), Galerie Charlot, Paris, France

DATA DRIFT, RIXC, kim? Contemporary Art Center, Riga, Latvia

Transitio_MX 06, Centro Nacional de las Artes, Mexico City, Mexico

Iterations as Habitats / Fleff 2015, Ithaca College, Ithaca, NY (online)

International Symposium on Electronic Art, Vancouver, Canada

Incubarte International Art Festival, MuVIM, Valencia, Spain

Media Art Futures Festival, Filmoteca Regional, Murcia, Spain

Kurzfilmfestival UNLIMITED, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany

The Drift, Singel 222, Dordrecht, Netherlands

Espacioenter, Tenerife Espacio de las Artes, Canary Islands, Spain

Pink Screen, the […] space, Mission Gallery, Cardiff, Wales, UK

Simultan Festival 10: Terms & Conditions, Timisoara, Romania

Jornadas de Reapropiación, Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico City, Mexico

Outcasting: Fourth Wall, Cardiff, Wales, UK

Synthetic Zero Event, Bronx Art Space, Bronx, NY

FILE Festival, FIESP Cultural Center, São Paulo, Brazil

Blurred Lines, Emily Carr University, Vancouver, Canada

Screen/Off, Northwest Film Forum, Seattle, WA

Print Screen, Holon Mediatheque, Tel Aviv, Israel

Computers Watching Movies, Web-Space, New Zealand (solo) (online)

Arte Laguna Finalist Exhibition, Telecom Italia Future Centre, Venice, Italy

COLLISION20, Boston Cyberarts Gallery, Boston, MA

CologneOFF IX: International Video Art Exhibition, Kédainiai Museum, Lithuania

Awards

For Computers Watching Movies I was awarded First Prize in the VIDA Awards for Art and Artificial Life in 2014, including a cash prize of 12,000 Euros.

Press

Computers Watching Movies has been written about widely. A few examples:

See my blog post on the subject for a full list of press about this project.

Still Frames

Following are the end frames of each individual clip. Click the image to load a full-resolution version.