Prosthetic Photographer, reverse clicking

prosthetic-photographer-reverse-clicking

There are many photographic artistic devices, built in recent years to critically analyse the intromission of new technologies in the photographic aesthetic process. Prosthetic Photographer is one of these: thanks to machine learning training this device learns to recognise pictures starting from a first classification set made by the artist Peter Buczkowski. When connected to a DSLR camera, if it intercepts an image previously classified as “beautiful”, Prosthetic Photographer emits an electrical impulse along a particular handle, very similar to a joystick, which immediately induces the shooting. Therefore the traditional authorial flow is reversed: it is not the mechanical click of our finger that causes the shot, but it is the artificial intelligence that chooses the formally beautiful image launching the trigger impulse. The aesthetic recognition is therefore completely delegated to the external apparatus. This delegation could have different further developments: on the one hand it seems to be a joke to our innate desire to formal beauty that, when it so easily reachable, becomes “voiceless”. On the other hand it produces an irresistible curiosity: how will that initial formal structure continue to improve? What will the device “learn”, shot after shot? When will the time come when we will not be able to recognise this new form of beauty? Chiara Ciociola

 

Peter Buczkowski – Prosthetic Photographer