Under an undulating glass canopy and a sky full of stars, violist Hank Dutt is bowing his way through the oscillations of a piece by Ottoman composer Tanburi Cemil Bey. Or is it his fellow Kronos Quartet member John Sherba on the violin next to him? Artificial intelligence algorithms tracking their facial expressions and body language can鈥檛 seem to make up their mind in projections displayed on a large screen behind the musicians. They also think Dutt is 77.6% male.
Trevor Paglen, whose Sight Machine collaboration with the innovative quartet was recently performed in Washington, thinks that鈥檚 especially sinister. Tracking the musicians in real-time using neural nets, the AI code classifies them as either male or female, in a very binary vision of the world. 鈥淚f the algorithm is saying that she鈥檚 65% female, then somebody who wrote that algorithm decided there鈥檚 such a thing as 100% female, and who is the 100% female?Is it Barbie, or is it Grace Jones or is it Angela Merkel?鈥 Paglen asks.
But the comical errors of computer vision also earn some laughs when the video coupled with Raymond Scott鈥檚 Powerhouse聽tries to caption the scene. Is that a pair of scissors or a cello that Sunny Yang is holding? Is she 20 percent sad or 36 percent disgusted? In essence we are watching what machines see when they look at human interactions. The result is almost as ludicrous as the frenetic assembly lines Scott鈥檚 piece often accompanies in animated cartoons. The tone is dramatically different in George Crumb鈥檚 bone-chilling God-music from his Vietnam War protest piece Black Angels (1970), where the violinists and violists trade their instruments for a series of crystal water glasses across which they bow. As they play, an algorithm meant to track their movements between frames produces a colourful display.
Paglen doesn鈥檛 believe in progress as a concept. As someone who spends his life probing mass surveillance, data detection and government secrecy, the underbelly of technological advances is very dark indeed. 鈥淚 don’t think about progress, I just think about what kinds of technologies are built to amplify what sorts of social and economic and political dynamics, and what dynamics are amplified by them and at whose expense they come,鈥 Paglen says in an interview. 鈥淭o me, that鈥檚 the question.鈥
Perhaps that tension is best illustrated by Different Trains, a Steve Reich composition written especially for Kronos that closes the concert. Flashing rapidly above the musicians is a series of images used to train computers (yes, it鈥檚 a pun) in recognising various objects, human movement and gestures. It鈥檚 strangely beautiful, coupled with an optimistic beat hailing the wonders of technological advances in bringing people closer together. The second movement of Reich鈥檚 piece, not played here, looks at the flipside of these advances 鈥 how Nazi Germany exploited rail infrastructure to achieve genocidal ambitions. 鈥淭hat’s the kind of question we leave hanging. What could possibly go wrong with Amazon, Google and Facebook collecting as much information as they possibly can?鈥 Paglen asks.
Olivia Hampton
Sight Machine. Performed in relation to the exhibition Trevor Paglen: Sites Unseen, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington. Until 6 January. For more information, click
Travelling to the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art (21 February – 2 June) and the Kunsthalle Wien (Autumn 2019).
Credits:
1.聽Trevor Paglen鈥檚 Sight Machine with Kronos Quartet and Obscura Digital. Courtesy Vimeo and Obscura Digital.
