kino-eye-recursion 

Video 1hr 6min, Artificial intelligence (cognitive computational engine) and custom software.

2017-05-01

Dziga Vertov's experimental documentary film “A Man With a Movie Camera” (1929) is often regarded as one of the first attempts to understand machine vision. Vertov claimed that this motion picture was not another attempt of a human director using a camera to narrate a preconceived story, on the contrary, the Soviet filmmaker took a position where he allowed the machine to capture reality as it is, enabling the eye of the machine as the only subject in the process; a mechanical eye which observes reality. KINO-EYE Recursion renders a new layer of machine vision and interpretation over Vertov's piece. A software extracts the frames of the film (still images) and analyses them using an on-line cognitive computation engine. Later a new version of the film is reconstructed without the visual motion, just black with sound (Alloy Electric Orchestra's soundtrack) plus a new element, text over the screen. The rendered text appropriates a well know element from visual language of modern films, subtitles. The new caption, displayed at the bottom of the black image, translates the missing picture into the interpretation of the cognitive engine, which tries its best to describe what it sees in human-like language. This artworks operates as a machine interpretation of a machine interpretation.