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ARS ELECTRONICA ARCHIVE - ART & SCIENCE

The basis of the „European Digital Art and Science Network“ is a big manifold network consisting of scientific mentoring institutions (ESA, CERN, ESO and Fraunhofer MEVIS), the Ars Electronica Futurelab and seven European cultural partners (Center for the promotion of science, RS – DIG Gallery, SK – Zaragoza City of Knowledge Foundation, ES – Kapelica Gallery / Kersnikova, SI – GV Art, UK – Laboral, ES – Science Gallery, IE. The EU funded project lasted from 2014 to 2017.
The Online Archive of Ars Electronica provides an overview of the individual activities of the network and also delivers information about the network itself, the residency artists and the involved project partners and the jury.

SEEING Exhibition at Science Gallery Dublin 2016

SEEING Exhibition at Science Gallery Dublin

SEEING—What are you looking at?
A free exhibition questioning how eyes, brains, and robots see
Science Gallery at Trinity College Dublin
24.06.—25.09.2016
• Info: Exhibition in the context of the European Art & Science Network
Year of creation
2016

Urls
https://dublin.sciencegallery.com/seeing/

Start:
Jun 24, 2016
End:
Sep 25, 2016

Science Gallery Dublin
3RNP (2014) by Patrick Tresset (FR)
3RNP—or 3 Robots Named Paul—is a theatrical robotic installation where the human becomes a model. In a scene reminiscent of a life drawing class, the human takes the sitter’s role and is sketched by three robots, drawing obsessively. Their bodies are old school desks. The drawing sessions last up to forty minutes, during which time the human cannot see the drawings in progress. The sitter only sees the robots alternating between observing and drawing, sometimes pausing between the two. The sounds produced by each robot’s motors create an improvised soundtrack.
As the model in a life drawing class, the human is personality-less, an object of study. The human sitter is passive, the robots taking what is perceived as the artistic role. Visitors to Science Gallery Dublin could sit for the robots and then receive a digital version of their portraits. Does a computer see you the way you see yourself?
20/X (2015) by McMullen_Winkler (US/DE)
20/X asks the question: Do we need to acquire new literacy skills in the current culture of synthetic vision? This interactive interface allows users to navigate through the different levels of an algorithm used by a computer to identify objects in the world around them—
from coarse and geometry-driven in the beginning to more specific and detail-oriented in the end. At this point, distinctive patterns, areas, and objects that “excite” the computer vision system can be identified. The title of the work refers to the measurement of perfect human vision—20/20—contrasted with an as-yet unquantifiable measure of seeing for a computer vision system, represented by the variable “X”. Visitors are invited to experience the process of seeing through a complex neural-network-based computer vision system to determine the value of “X” for themselves.
Blanks (1996) by Angelika Böck (DE)
Eye-tracking technology forms the basis of Blanks, a series of portraits characterized by the figure four. Four people each looked at a square sheet of blank paper, their range of vision restricted to a 40x40 cm section, for a single minute. Their eye movements were recorded in black on a pane of glass. This process was repeated four times for each portrait, with each pane then placed on top of the others to create a single level. The first time, eye movements were recorded while the subject viewed the blank paper. The second time, the subject was presented with a recording of the eye movements from the first, and their eye movements were recorded as they observed this. Likewise for the third and fourth times.
Thus, the subject and the observer are embodied as one in the piece. The piece recounts a dialogue between the person as the observer and the person as the subject. Standing directly in front of the composition, all the levels merge and the pieces can be viewed as one image. Only by changing the angle of observation can the viewer distinguish individual layers and the dialogues between the different viewing processes.
D-EYE (2014) by Andrea Russo (IT)
D-EYE is a sophisticated lens that attaches to a smartphone and uses the light source and camera of the phone to capture an image of the back of the eye—the retina. It is a low-cost and portable modern-day digital ophthalmoscope, a device that allows you to see the structures inside the eye. Healthcare professionals use it as a screening tool to examine the retinal wall for signs of health issues. The retina is a window to our health, and can reveal diseases such as diabetes, glaucoma, age-related macular degeneration, hypertension, and melanomas or cancers. According to the World Health Organization, almost 300 million people in the world suffer from vision loss, and 80% of those people could have avoided losing their sight with earlier intervention. D-EYE can be used in rural or remote areas, and retinal images can be transmitted via cellular networks, connecting to a care team wherever they may be. D-EYE is a pocket-sized tele-health solution that could potentially help millions of people worldwide.
Eye Care Works (2016) by me&him&you and Kate Coleman (IE)
In association with renowned eye surgeon Kate Coleman, me&him&you present a contemporary take on the eye test. The aim is to illustrate Kate’s vision to “democratize” eye care, making vision-testing possible across the world in, quite literally, “the blink of an eye”. Visitors will be able to test their own eyesight using two machines from optical equipment supplier, Topcon—an Automatic Refractor and a Non-Mydriatic Fundus Camera—while learning about the latest advancements in digital eye testing. me&him&you have also worked with Kate to present a contemporary take on the classic color blindness test in the Science Gallery Café, drawing on abstract expressionism and colors of the rainbow to explore the spectrum of light in a two-dimensional piece. This exhibit was made possible through support from CAP Advisers Ltd, Colombus Circle Investments, Inkspo, Kinsale Capital Investment, Ocuco, Ovelle, and Topcon.
EyeCane (2010) by Amir Amedi and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (IL)
How can we sense distant objects without vision? This question led to the development of the EyeCane, a lightweight, finger-sized, low-cost virtual cane. The EyeCane operates as a kind of virtual flashlight, replacing or strengthening the familiar white cane. The device uses infrared sensors to estimate the distance between the user and the object at which it is pointing. This information undergoes a “sensory transformation” and becomes vibrations, which are sent to the user’s hand via the device. The closer the user is to an object, the stronger the vibration. This allows people who are blind or who have a visual impairment to identify obstacles of different heights, understand the distance between themselves and the objects around them, and create a spatial picture through which they can navigate safely. The device is intuitive, and its application can be taught within a few minutes.
Ground Truth (2016) by Studio The GreenEyl (DE)
Today, computer vision plays an essential role in everything from robotics and healthcare to surveillance. In order to train algorithms to see, researchers feed them with image data sets, which are translated into statistical models. These models in turn form the basis of computer vision software, for example for face tracking or optical character recognition. Ground Truth is a collection of image data sets of the human body—such as faces, fingerprints, and hand gestures. Mapping them out as large format prints lets us see images we usually never get to see. What are the aesthetics of these data sets? What are their peculiarities? How large are they? How many faces are enough to develop a face recognition algorithm? What is included, what is not included? What are possible biases?
Lucida III (2016) by Suki Chan (UK)
Lucida III is an immersive moving image installation designed to show the viewer how we see with our central and peripheral vision. Using eye-tracking technology, the artwork invites the audience to participate and make the discovery that their gaze changes what they are seeing and hearing. At first, the visitor will see a still image of the endothelium—a single layer of hexagonal cells on the inner surface of the cornea—accompanied by an atmospheric soundscape. When a visitor sits on the seat in front of the screen, the movement of their gaze across this still image begins to “burn” through this cellular surface at precisely the area on which their central vision is focused. Over time, the trajectory of their gaze and a view of the night sky are simultaneously revealed. For the audience watching this screen, they will be able to observe the rapid movement of someone else’s eyes and a trail of the trajectory of their gaze across the moving image artwork. The atmospheric soundtrack responding to visitors’ eye movements was composed by Dominik Scherrer.

Lucida III is supported by the Wellcome Trust Small Arts Awards and Arts Council England.
Magical Colour Space (2015) by Kurt Laurenz Theinert (DE)
Magical Colour Space, 2015
Experience your colour perception in a poetic way

You step into a room. The walls are made up of coloured stripes. Above you, red, green and blue lights cycle through the spectrum of different colours. As the lighting changes, the walls around you seem to throb and move. Magical Colour Space looks at the basics of colour perception. When light hits an object, the object absorbs some of the light wavelengths and reflects the rest. The human eye and brain work together to translate this reflected light into colour. As the light in Magical Colour Space slowly changes its proportions of red, green and blue, the coloured stripes on the wall reflect only the wavelengths in their own colour. Because the brain uses changes in light levels to help detect motion, this creates the illusion that the walls are moving.
Mirror II - Distance (2016) by David Cotterrell (UK) and Ruwanthie de Chickera (LK)
Mirror II – Distance, 2016
An expanded cinema dialogue between strangers

Mirror II – Distance examines the distances between individuals who occupy, protect, and work in worlds that they don’t really belong to. The Diplomatic Enclave in Islamabad is a heavily gated expat community in the capital city of Pakistan. This enclave is cut off from the rest of the country by high walls and heavy security. Inside the enclave is a network of country and organizational compounds further barricaded from each other. Entry into the enclave and entry into the various demarcated territories inside is monitored by local Pakistani guards. These men are privy to the culture, conversations, and experiences of the international communities that they are responsible for protecting. In this piece, two Pakistani guards stand watch over the expat compounds. They observe each other from a distance as they listen to the visitors, experts, and specialists discuss Pakistan, its people, and its future. Using a cable mounted camera system, both forward and rear views are filmed simultaneously. This piece uses an experimental filming format called “collimation,” which manipulates perception to provide an illusion of depth. This installation is part of the Mirror project, a series of two-screen works devised to provide insight into global communities that experience distancing and objectification.
Mobility Device & White Cane Amplified (2013, 2015) by Carmen Papalia (CA)
Mobility Device & White Cane Amplified, 2013, 2015
Documentaries of collaborative performances

Mobility Device is a collaborative performance in which Carmen Papalia is accompanied by a marching band to replace his white cane as his primary means of gathering information about his surroundings. As a piece of music, Mobility Device is an extension of the musicality of the white cane—fixtures such as curbs, lampposts, and sandwich boards become notes in the soundscape of a place. Mobility Device proposes the possibility of user-generated, creative process-based systems of access. It represents a non-institutional (and non-institutionalizing) temporary solution for the problem of the white cane. On June 1st 2013, Carmen performed a site-specific rendition of Mobility Device, with accompaniment by the Great Centurion Marching Band from Century High School, at Grand Central Art Center in Santa Ana, California.
White Cane Amplified documents the experiential research that Carmen conducted in preparation for a visit to the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering in Massachusetts, where he is currently producing an acoustic mobility device in collaboration with students in Sara Hendren’s “Investigating Normal” class. The narrative depicts Carmen speaking into a bullhorn as he attempts to perform the social function of the white cane while maintaining his agency, finding support and communicating his nuanced and emergent needs.
Peeping Hole (2010) by Kenichi Okad and Naoaki Fujimoto (JP)
Peeping Hole, 2010
A simple hole betrays your eyes

In the near future, it’s possible that we will use our eyes not only to take in information but also to deliver information. What if our gaze was monitored by someone else? How would we feel and how would this affect our communication? Peeping Hole is an interactive installation that tracks a viewer’s gaze and reveals what they are staring at to an audience, without the viewer noticing. Though a small hole in the exhibit, visitors will gaze at an image. The audiences around the viewer can see what they are staring at, thanks to eye tracking technology. The viewer may not notice their audience and what they can see until the next visitor steps up to view the exhibit. Peeping Hole is a playful look at vision monitoring and privacy, but will this technology become ubiquitous in the years to come, and how will it be used?
SIMULACRA (2013) by Karina Smigla-Bobinski (DE)
At the heart of SIMULACRA are four LCD monitor panels, assembled in the form of a hollow square. The ensemble appears to have been gutted, and looks almost overgrown. A tangle of cables and control devices pours out of the middle of the square. Around it, several magnifying lenses with polarized lenses dangle from chains. The monitors don’t display any pictures, and shine with an intense white light—but with the help of the magnifying lenses, function is restored to the screens and their secrets are revealed. Is this process happening in our brains, or in the lenses? SIMULACRA builds a bridge between technology and perception, and explores the difference between subject and view, and between image and reality.
Screen Mutations (2015) by Louisa Zahareas (GR)
Screen Mutations, 2015
Deforming reality to fit the screen

We are increasingly living our lives through filters. Through social networks, through smartphones, through the coil of fiber and unseen airborne signals. In the communication age, we very often speak to the ones closest to us through digital means. The screen is no longer a window to somewhere else; it is, instead, the here and now, while our physical surroundings are slowly becoming the “other world.” We’re closer, yet further apart, than ever. Screen Mutations explores the growing role of video communication applications—such as Skype and Facetime—in blurring the line between the physical and digital world. It imagines a speculative future where our physical reality is deformed to be viewed through a camera. This is achieved by designing a set of props—cups, teapots, utensils—that look deformed off-screen, while on-screen they look “normal” due to optical illusions achieved by the geometric distortion of a 3D object. Thus, the point of view of the webcam becomes the main design tool. The result is like a reversal of a Salvador Dali painting: the objects have surrealistic and impractical shapes in the tangible world, while the image as it appears digitally seems to suggest otherwise.
Seeing Stars (2003) by Dianne Bos (CA)
Using a pinhole camera—one of the simplest image-creating technologies—this installation demonstrates how light passing through tiny holes into a dark space projects an image. A pinhole camera is a simple lightproof box with a small hole in one side. Light from outside passes through this single opening and projects an upside-down image onto the opposite side of the box. In the human eye, light shines through the cornea, which focuses images onto the retina, just as light through a lens projects an image onto film. Seeing Stars expands on the single-lens image we are used to seeing with our eyes. The multiple pinhole “lenses” project a galaxy-shaped cluster of lights onto ground glass. We recognize a starry pattern at first, but upon closer examination, we can see that each star is in fact a tiny image of what’s on the opposite side of the device—in this case, a light bulb. Each view differs slightly, depending on where the aperture is located within the overall star pattern.
Seen/Unseen (2014) by Alia Pialtos (US)
Seen/Unseen, 2014
Video about human connection

Seen/Unseen is a video projection that draws from human connection, amplifying the effects of the unconscious reactions we experience while engaging with others. It stems from a desire to visualize the gaze and to make visible the invisible sight lines between individuals. In the piece, an oblong frame acts as a peephole or pupil that reveals a view of suspended threads that span across the frame. At first, the piece seems very abstract; the viewers are left to witness the curious movements of these hanging strings. Although the mechanisms that create the movements are not obvious at first, the delicate lines appear to be alive. Within the last few seconds of the video, a slow zoom reveals the source of the movement to the viewer. The use of the hair acts as a physical extension of the body and amplifies the effects of the unconscious reactions we experience while engaging with those to whom we feel closest.
Sight Without Light (2016) by Story Inc & Daniel Kish (NZ/US)
Sight Without Light, 2016
Exploring human echolocation

Daniel Kish’s eyes were surgically removed before he was thirteen months old, to save him from an aggressive form of cancer. As Daniel grew up, he taught himself to see the world around him using echolocation. Daniel makes clicking noises with his tongue to understand his environment, navigating his surroundings by listening to the echoes as his clicks bounce off surfaces. Seeing is not a metaphor for Daniel. He uses the same part of his brain—the visual cortex—to picture his surroundings as people with eyes do. It’s just that the information comes in a different medium. It’s sight without light. This exhibit aims to give visitors a little glimpse into the world of sight without light by demonstrating one form of echolocation—seeing an object move closer to them by listening to the reflected sound of their own voice.
Synesthesia: Colored Music (2012) by Rox Vazquez (AR)
Synesthesia: Colored Music, 2012
Interactive installation inspired by synesthetic experiences

Has a sound ever reminded you of a shape, colour or taste? The term “synesthesia” is formed from the fusion of the Ancient Greek words for “together” and “sensation”. Synesthesia is a rare neurological condition in which different sensations perceived by different senses are mixed up. In one of the most common forms of synesthesia, letters or numbers are perceived as colored. A synesthetic person may have the capacity to “hear” colour, “see” music, or even perceive different taste sensations by touching objects with certain textures.
When they describe their experience, synesthetes often talk about visual shapes on a “screen” located in front of their faces. Through the use of new technologies, this project aims to bring you closer to an audiovisual synesthetic experience. Using colored shapes, a camera, a screen, and a programming tool, participants can assemble a sequence of colors and a computer will transform it into an audio-visual experience. This merging of senses evokes the experience of synesthesia.
The Innovation Engine (2015) by Frederik De Wilde (BE) in collaboration with Jeff Clune and Anh Nguyen (US)
The Innovation Engine, 2015
Get an insight into how a computer “thinks” and “sees”

Machines can’t do what the human imagination can... yet. This installation researches the failure of machines and computers to simulate the human mind. A touchscreen allows the visitor to navigate through and explore a deep neural network. In machines, an artificial neural network is a computer algorithm inspired by the central nervous systems of animals. The webcam analyses in realtime what it sees and what it has been “taught” to detect. What is detected is visualized as highlighted artificial neurons. The audience can then browse through all the neural layers and get an insight into how a computer “thinks” and “sees”. A voice tells visitors which layer they are looking at and what’s happening. In a lot of cases, the visitor may not recognize these images, but the artificial intelligence appears to, demonstrating the limits of machine comprehension. This work demonstrates how AI and deep neural networks are easily fooled, a dystopian thought when you take into account the fact that they are already used by the military, drones, and Tesla’s self-driving cars. How much confidence do we have in ourselves and the technologies we develop? Or in societies and industries that are accelerating the development of AI and automatization?
The Unresolved Image (2016) by Studio TheGreenEyl (DE)
The Unresolved Image is a structural, fractal-like image that resolves one image into another. As you walk towards it, you zoom deeper into its layers of images, from architectural to microscopic scale. It is an investigation into the topic of visual resolution and granularity of data, and ultimately explores the limits of our perception and comprehension. The image has a resolution of approximately 10,000 dpi, most common in semiconductor manufacturing. It is composed of myriads of images from different data sets that are used in computer vision to teach machines to recognize and understand the human body. As the propagation of computer vision increases, so does the quantization of data about the body: posture, face structure, fingerprints, ear shapes, iris patterns, veins—they all become machine-readable aspects of the human.
Unseen Portraits (2015) by Philipp Schmitt & Stephan Bogner (DE)
Unseen Portraits, 2015
Artistic investigation of face-tracking algorithms

Computer vision relies on algorithms to make sense of the world. Unseen Portraits investigates what face recognition algorithms consider to be a human face. How much do you have to deform someone’s features to make them invisible to a machine? Portrait photos of visitors are distorted on a screen. A surveillance camera films the distortion and uses facial recognition software to scan the camera footage for faces while the image becomes more and more obscured. The moment the photo becomes too warped and the face can’t be recognized by the algorithm anymore, the software takes a screenshot. The visitor is now invisible to computer vision. Despite its subject matter, Unseen Portraits isn’t a conceptual investigation of the algorithms used. Rather, the project uses computer vision software as an artistic tool, creating images reminiscent of Francis Bacon’s self-portraits from the 1970s. It isn’t so much a mechanism to hide from the software as it is a way to capture the software’s flaws in a work of art.
Oakes Twins Collection (2009-2016)
While analyzing human vision, twins Ryan and Trevor Oakes noticed that when looking beyond a foreground object to the distance, a person’s two eyes split the near object into a transparent double image of itself. With this optical phenomenon, they invented a drawing technique. To acknowledge the fanned-out formation of light rays human eyes see, they construct curved paper and support it with a concave easel. To draw, they split their pen into a double image simply by looking past it. Holding the pen’s left image to the right edge of the curved drawing paper, the pen’s right image will hover in mid-air beyond the paper’s edge. The hovering pen may then trace over the distant scene, thereby simultaneously marking the scene’s proportions onto the paper. Their artworks shown in SEEING include Have No Narrow Perspectives: Field Museum(black line period), Ocean Horizon Line 2: Pacific Coast Highway, Los Angeles, CA (color period), Evergreen Cemetery in Late Winter(swirlism period), and Bond Street Terrace(ripples period).
The vOICe: Seeing with Sound (2016)
What does it mean, “to see”? Can a person with sight loss “see” again by substituting one sense for another using? The vOICe is an interactive demonstration of a sensory substitution device technology that allows people to see with sound. Sensory substitution devices for people with a visual impairment provide for missing visual input by converting images into a format that another sense can process non-invasively, such as sound. This is possible due to neuroplasticity—the ability the brain has to reorganize itself throughout an individual’s life by creating new neural pathways to adapt to changes as it needs to, whether that be as a result of changes in the environment or injury. The vOICe, invented by Dutch engineer Peter Meijer, is now being used by Michael Proulx and other cognitive neuroscientists, philosophers, and artists to explore the nature of the senses and how the brain allows us to see, even without vision.
Artist Biographies - SEEING / Science Gallery Dublin