Machine curation

Selected as the winning entry for this year’s IK Prize, Recognition proposes new perspectives on understanding art, positioning AI as a benevolent and useful technology. ‘We have to end this nonsense rhetoric of humans versus machines,’ says Dave Coplin, chief envisioning officer at Microsoft UK, a sponsor of the IK Prize and a collaborator with the communication research centre Fabrica. ‘It’s about humans plus machines. AI is extending the reach of what humanity can achieve.’

Designed by a team of researchers from Fabrica, Recognition uses a complex algorithm to compare and match images based on object recognition, facial recognition, composition and context. Pairing current affairs images with classical art, the system offers detailed information on how it interpreted each visual and a list of aesthetic and contextual similarities that make it a match.

The installation also invites viewers to create their own image matches. Information collected over the three months of the exhibition will later be fed back into the algorithm in the hope of retraining it to become more ‘human’.